Honest Opinion : E3 2018 - Xbox Conference (Sunday June 10th, 2018)
So, it's safe to say that this post won't be as detailed as the EA one from yesterday, and the same can probably be said of Sony and Nintendo's conferences when they come to surface. The games that were shown off today weren't shown in immense detail, and only a sampling of them brought out someone from the studio to expand on these announcements. Instead, I'll list off the titles that were showcased and then follow up with the ones that jumped out personally to me, and then we'll bide our time until Bethesda starts their showcase in just a few hours from me starting to write this.
The List
(in order of announcement)
Halo Infinite Ori and the Will of the Wisps Sekiro : Shadows Die Twice Fallout 76
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit Crackdown 3 Nier : Automata
Metro : Exodus Kingdom Hearts III Sea of Thieves Battlefield V Forza Horizon 4
We Happy Few PUBG Tales of Vespiria : Definite Edition The Divison 2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider Session Black Desert Devil May Cry 5
Cuphead : The Delicious Last Course Tunic Jump Force Dying Light 2 Battletoads
Just Cause 4 Gears POP! Gears Tactics Gears of War 5 Cyberpunk 2077
And that's not all of them. Go ahead, count them, there's not fifty in that list. That's because in the middle of all these game announcements, Xbox paid some attention to their recently launched Game Pass subscription service. They're adding a FastStart service to the...service, in order to speed up players' access to the games themselves, as well as announcing three new titles that were going to be added to the library today. The Division, Elder Scrolls Online, and Fallout 4.Amidst all this was a splash video giving quick glimpses into at least twenty games that were to be featured on the console, and additionally be a part of the Game Pass library.
Titles such as : Afterparty, brought by the same studio who did Oxenfree. Warhammer : Vermintide, Waking, Super Meatboy Forever, and plenty of others. Yet, the one that stood out the most to me in it's brief ten second clip, was Harold Halibut : A Handmade Adventure Game which looks to be entirely created with clay and claymation. If that's the case, I can not wait to get my hands on this one.
But we have to talk about the list. Maybe not everything on the list because even that is a ton of stuff. And again, these games were mostly just given trailer's being shown off, with a fraction of that list being given a bit more face time with a dev from the studio coming out to expand on the announcement.
Todd Howard from Bethesda came out to give us a tiny bit more of a sneakpeak at Fallout 76. Since Bethesda's own conference is still to come tonight, there was never a moment to believe that we'd get to see a ton of info on this game anyways. What we did get though was a longer trailer than the one fans were treated to at the end of Vault Boy's 24 hour Twitch stream, and some more confirmed information. For one, the game is going to focus on the inhabitants of the titular vault, and them being the first ones to come to surface after the bombs have been dropped in the war. The world looks beautiful and full, not the radiation-torn wasteland we've been used to with all the other titles. Trees are full and colorful, buildings maintain a lot of their structure, as do wrecked cars and planes. This Fallout looks to be massive, gorgeous, and hopefully a lot of fun. But, I'm sure we can speculate more on that in the coming hours.
Kingdom Hearts is making it's first entry on to an Xbox console, which is definitely exciting. However, the trailer that followed for it was not that fantastic. It looks crisp and you can definitely see the expansion to include a lot more of the newer Disney worlds (Frozen, Rapunzel, and Wreck-It Ralph to name a few), to me it just looked like some Disney scenes were chopped up and Square Enix characters were video-shopped in.
After it was revealed that Crackdown 3's release would be pushed back even further, the video we got to see didn't make up much for that fact. A character, voiced by Terry Crews, gave us a quick tour of the game promising lots of mech's, crazy jumps, tons of action and a few bleeped out curse words.
Forza Horizon 4 was one of the few and only games to get an on stage demo of it working as well. The newest entry in the open-world racing franchise is set in historical Britain. It features a fully synchronized shared world, meaning that when players play together online, they'll always be in the same universe. All the other drivers you see are going to be player-controlled vehicles, with a new D-pad centric quick-chat feature that will improve how you're able to interact with each other before zipping off to find events or create your own. On top of all this, the game is going to have a fully synchronized and dynamic weather and day/night system, so not only will you be in the same world, you'll face the same weather. The demo on stage showcased how unique this weather system will be, taking us through an area in different seasons. What was limited in the summertime to the roads and hills, expanded to being able to drive on a frozen over lake in the middle of winter.
Capcom dropped jaws when they showcased Devil May Cry 5. Thats right, the fifth entry in the main series. That whole...alternate universe / alter-ego Dante thing...forget about it (at least for now, but hopefully for good). The fans spoke, and the team listened, and as the dev's proudly proclaimed on stage "DMC is back!"
Retro fans got a bit of a reason to get excited. A new Battletoads title will be dropping in 2019. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of it really, just some big vague words being voiced over (and this was made fun of in the reveal itself so that makes it okay) but keep your eyes open for more of this one.
Square Enix made a couple of appearances in the conference, showing off not just KH III earlier, but world premiere trailers of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Just Cause 4. The former has been talked about quite a bit recently, and the footage shown makes it seem like September will be really far away. However, Just Cause 4 was a pleasant surprise. This is a franchise I've been curious about for a bit now and haven't had the chance to really sit down and try these games out, so knowing that the universe is expanding even further for it, and will do so by the end of this calendar year....sign me up.
Out of nowhere, the Gears of War cog logo appeared on the screen, and a bunch of sounds filled the background until that ever familiar Lancer chainsaw took over. The wall was busted down and what popped in was...a POP figure. Yup. Funko and Epic Games have teamed up to bring us a mobile app game in the Gears universe. That's not all though. The studio is looking to expand its horizons and cover some new territory, and showed off no more than a minute of another title in the works, Gears Tactics, a strategic tactical based game that, from what was shown, looks so amazing. And I can fully admit I'm biased with my recently found love for RTS games and the like. But....there was still more. To cap it all off, expect the narrative of the world to continue even further, when Gears of War 5 comes out and we can get our hands on it.
To close off the entire conference, Phil Spencer was cut off during his exit speech as the video feeds were hacked, and everyone was treated to the first juicy visuals of the long talked about Cyberpunk 2077. We didn't get to see any gameplay, but the trailer was a good length, and it showed a lot. A world filled with humans and mechs combined, fast cars to be driven around. It appears that the world will be quite sizable, and filled with plenty of activities to keep players entertained. You can bet that eyes will be peeled for even more info about this title before it finally drops.
Overall, this conference was a lot of fun. There were a ton of announcements, and they didn't all focus on brand new, never before seen games. Cuphead will be getting a DLC expansion, THe Delicious Last Course which will feature a new isle filled with new bosses to take down, and Ms. Chalice, the games newest playable character. Sea of Thieves fans can expect two new DLC expansions to drop in July and September. Nier : Automata will be getting a re-release complete with all DLC and enhancements to be run on the Xbox One X console.
It's been a couple of years since I got to fully watch one of Xbox's E3 conferences, and the last one I did watch was a train-wreck. This year, they killed it. I'm a Sony fanboy at heart, but I really enjoyed everything that Microsoft unveiled today. I know I didn't expand on everything in the list, and that's because the other titles are things that don't fully speak to me myself, but there's so much that dropped today, everybody will be made happy by something.
I started this with three hours to go before Bethesda's conference. Now there's two hours left. We know we'll see more of Fallout 76 tonight, but what else will grace our vision? Only time will tell. For now, we wait, but I will see you guys in a handful of hours with my feelings on that conference as well.
