And E3 is done… Kinda. Yes, I know the first proper day just happened, but after the press events, my work is mostly done, and 90% of the announcements are out of the way. It’s just impressions from here on out, which is just dandy in my book. However, Nintendo, Square Enix, and AMD all had press conferences, so I’ll just get to explaining what the blazes they were about, and what my Autistic mind thought about them.
Disclaimer: For my coverage of E3 2015, I chose to use captioned CGs from a series of Eroge (pornographic games) developed by the companies Crowd and Bishop. I in no way support these titles, I dislike pornographic material in general, but I do like some of the non-pornographic art included in these titles, and thought this would be a fun little gimmick.
Before getting to Nintendo’s E3 Dream 2015 part two, time for some non-press conference announcements! It was not revealed during Nintendo’s digital event, but Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is coming out this fall, and the lack of promotion shows how much Nintendo really cares about it coming out in the west. In other localization news, Atlus USA will be bringing over Imageepoch’s final title, Stella Glow, which will make all those ladies on JRPG Gaf happy as they get their 240p happiness. Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls are going to the PS4, because those games are so great when going through them a second time. Kojima released his final Metal Gear trailer, ever, for The Phantom Pain, and it is an incredible taste of what will surely be an amazing swansong to a series before it is hopefully murdered vigorously and thoroughly to the point where it is dead and dead forever… Then Telltale announced the three episode mini-series, The Walking Dead: Michonne, which will be the seventh series Telltale is making… it’s not, but it feels like it. Why did this need to be an under the radar E3 reveal?
Crytek is making a VR game, which means it will be free to play unless the company is run by liars, which it probably is, called Robinson: The Journey. It will be about dinosaurs and a little boy, and that is good enough for me. While Summer Lesson still looks like the best VR game as it involves you hanging out with a digital lady… And to string together all the threads I have gathered, Michel Ancel has stepped down as the director of Beyond Good and Evil 2… Please just cancel this, kill the dreams. Not everything can be Dark Souls, which is not only successful, but will involve sci-fi and ninjas after a few more installments… At least if Miyazaki gets his way.
With the Nintendo World Championships and Smash Brothers reveal out of the way, I would have said that Nintendo already had the best showing of this year’s E3, and will continue that streak as long as they continue day-long gameplay footage and have interesting games to show off. Yet they still held a Digital Event to make all the children happy. They did this with puppet interludes and… by not really announcing all that much to be quite honest. Yes, they showed off StarFox Zero, the Wii U entry in the series, but I was actually pretty underwhelmed as it looked like StarFox, and there was not a lot for the to talk about beyond the transformation abilities the Arwing has, the origins of the series I was already aware of, and the control scheme. Oh dear, the control scheme. I get the idea of wanting to expand beyond traditional controllers, but it is a fruitless effort. Also, based on an interview I found, there will be no difficulty options, no branching paths, and you only have the lasers as your weapons as bombs are gone… At least Platinum will help with the development, which means something, I guess.
They also showed off new Amiibos, oh joy, with Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival being a Mario Party-esc title that is completely based around Animal crossing Amiibos that I am sure will be easy to find. Same with the Animal Crossing cards for the 3DS furniture arrangement simulator. You should, however, be able to find two licensed Amiibo with little to no difficulty, as they will presumably be made by the people who supply Skylanders, seeing as how Nintendo is collaborating with Activision for Skylanders: Supercharged with a Donkey Kong and Bowser… which is what people get instead of the Nintendo Skylanders-esc game.
Amiibos will also be used for Super Mario Maker, meaning you can play as Shulk and an Inkling if you happen to have those figures, but the supply issues have not been addressed as of yet. Instead, the issues seems to add a stain on every game that includes Amiibo support, as you simply cannot play as Lucina in Super Mario Maker if you want to because you cannot get that specific Amiibo. And that is a shame, as Super Mario Maker is a dream project level editor that looks to be pretty darn amazing. While Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash for the Wii U looks like a quick effort to pad out Q4 for the Wii U, and a waste for the developer Camelot, because they can do so much better than Mario sports games.
I’d say let them at least try a Mario RPG, as Nintendo seems to be running out of ideas, as they combined Mario and Luigi with Paper Mario in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam… or Mario & Luigi & Paper Mario. The footage makes me concerned about whether or not Dream Team’s problem of being rather schizophrenic with its minigames and mechanics may pop up again, but it’s nice to see Paper Mario back after over eight years of silence. Same thing with Metroid… or I would say that if Metroid was actually coming back, instead the spin-off of Metroid Prime: Federation Force was revealed as a multiplayer cooperative 3DS first person shooter which contains BlastBall, that forgettable mech-soccer mini game from Nintendo’s World Championships. It has been over a decade since the last 2D Metroid game, and I honestly just want something similar to the three you made over the past twenty years.
At least there was some Zelda love, as The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes is a three person cooperative dungeon exploring Zelda game with an emphasis on verticality in the map, and stacking three Links on top of one another. That, and wearing costumes, including Zelda’s dress, because not enough people still assumed that Link was a girl named Zelda. That said, the 3Ds title looks solid and is coming out later this year. Hyrule Warriors Legends was also revealed for 3DS, featuring more or less the same footage that was already leaked, and is coming out in Q1 of 2016. I would assume that Fire Emblem If… Fates, Fire Emblem Fates, would come out around the same time, in the form of two versions, as it was later confirmed.
Both Illusionary Revelations #FE and Monado 2: The Cross Chronicles look to be titles that will convince me to buy a Wii U come next year, and will both consume a hundred hours of my life each. While Yoshi’s Woolly World continues to be a delightful little adventure, but the talk of it being hard to find collectibles makes me question if the game designers know what they are doing, but I am sure the title will be praised come June 25th. While Yo-Kai Watch will be out holiday 2015, because localizing things is hard. As is creating a show closer, as the best Nintendo could do was announce a charity competition, which I am totally okay with, but I was hoping for one big final reveal, as I always do. At least the conference displayed puppet based, anthropomorphic transformation, body horror, which is a totally untapped fetish market that I am truly glad to see Nintendo indoctrinating children into. Overall… I think Nintendo’s E3 presence was actually pretty good. Yes, this event had a lot of eh mixed in with it, and no surprises that anybody cared about. It was predictable, and the interesting stuff was pretty much leaked, which is only somewhat Nintendo’s fault.
Square Enix decided to take the torch a few minutes later with a live conference that was ultimately a bit… poorly constructed, featuring a lot of long winded speeches, but there was at least something to it. Well, I say that but Just Cause 3 really struck me as a boring title, as its grappling mechanics and explosion adoration both became very dull after a duo of trailers for the game before a release date of December 1 was thrown onto the game and it was shooed away for the exact opposite end of the action spectrum. Platinum games is working on a NeiR title that just began development! I never played NieR, bit surprise, but any game made by a man who wears a horrifying smiley-face stone mask when they are presenting is cool in my book. Also, Platinum is working on it, so I will definitely give it a try when Square Enix brings it, along with all of these titles, to PC.
Rise of the Tomb Raider made me wonder just what Crystal Dynamics’ definition of the word character is, as it apparently includes pores and eyelash physics rather than, you know, writing. I get wanting to show off your tech, but I always feel that if the tech is the most interesting aspect of your game, to the point where you are building the game around it, you should always triple check your story and characters before you do anything. Not that those matter for Lara Croft Go, a nifty looking turn based exploration iOS title that has a simple, but appealing visual style. But Square enix’s western side still felt the need to show off the new Hitman title, cleverly entitled Hitman, which will be a platform, a service, a provider of content throughout the entire generation of consoles, focusing on social interactions between players and people going about assassinations worldwide, with new content added periodically… I have no interest in the series, but that actually sounds quite nice.
While Deus Ex: Mankind Divided focuses on the lethal elements of the series, and is now dubbing itself an action RPG, instead of a first person Stealth RPG with a healthy dose of RPG elements. I don’t know, this sort of intense serious murder filled action just sens a mild buzzing through my brain at this point, as I have simply become so numb and tired of this kind of thing. I do love its future technology and overall aesthetics, but I simply look at them and want to make my own cyborg future thingamajig, and I probably will in a few years. On that note, it has taken nearly a decade for Kingdom Hearts III to come out, so Square Enix naturally misled people with an iOS title before showing an enticing looking action game that looks gorgeous, but is unappealing to me in every other way. I really do not like Disney’s characters, and Kingdom Hearts has a story that I feel is… pretty much the absolute worse story I have ever heard from any medium, as it has so much weight to it and so much thought placed into it from both the creators and fans. It is a waste that, if it does have value in any facet, is deemed utterly worthless by how dense and convoluted it is.
Final fantasy VII’s tease was once again shown, while the PS4 port will arrive in winter of 2015, and Worlds of Final Fantasy is meant to introduce newcomers to the series, I have no clue how it plans on doing that, but whatever. Naturally, I would have assumed there to be some enticing Final Fantasy XV footage, but instead Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness (I adore that subtitle) was shown, and it looks to be a pretty fun and seamless JRPG with action combat, and should be out sometime in 2016. Okay, I have no understanding of the Star Ocean narrative, and the gameplay footage shown was pretty minimal, but it has potential, and hopefully it will be better than Tri-Ace’s supposed Last Hope for the series. Oh, also Square Enix established Tokyo RPG Factory as a studio that will make mid-scale JRPGs, are working on something called Setsuna, and it should be done by 2016. No details were given, just concept art- which is naturally very pretty. An odd note to end a pretty alright press conference on, and a continuation of Square Enix’s bad habit of announcing titles as soon as possible.
AMD and PC Gamer joined forces to bring forth the final press conference of the event, a baby press conference that… I am not going to really cover, as so little happened. Killer Instinct and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition are coming to PC, which is nice to hear, while Killing Floor 2 and Strafe look more like what I think of when I think of Doom than Doom 2016, and Soma is coming out September 22nd. There were a lot of smaller announcements, but they were presented in a very boring, overly casual way, and was two hours long. Yet, seeing as how this also served as a marketing ploy for AMD, I suppose I should not have expected much. I mean, they tried, the host was charismatic enough, but it was a very boring E3 press conference overall.
