E3 – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly… and the Nintendy (Patreon)

Does Game Informer still do The Good, The Bad, The Ugly? I haven’t touched one of those magazines in years, but it seems like a great format to talk about this year’s E3 with so let’s do it!

Keep in mind these opinions are solely those of Locke Kosta – GG’s marketing/PR head, lead programmer (for the Rebuild and beyond) and token American “conflict artist” so-to-speak. 

I’m a massive gaming geek who spent every E3 conference snarking in our Discord’s gaming channel and we figured ya’ll might like to know what at least one GG game dev thought about the proceedings. I’m a fairly eclectic gamer and not much of a zealous fanboy of anything these days, so I’ll try to be as neutral as possible. 

(Keep in mind: I care more about gameplay and game design than pretty graphics. Most of my thoughts will reflect that. Also just because I don’t like or I criticize something doesn’t mean I think you’re shit for thinking or feeling otherwise – differing opinions are not personal attacks.)

The Good

Let’s just get it out of the way at the beginning. Obviously Cyberpunk 2077 stole E3. Even if you’re one of the few people in the world who aren’t highly anticipating Cyberpunk, you can’t objectively say that the Keanu reveal wasn’t fantastic. 

The biggest moment aside from that for me personally was the PSO2 finally coming to the west reveal. I know it’s now an old as fuck mmo and I still don’t care. The MMO genre is in a very bad way right now and I enjoyed PSO back in the day. I’ll definitely be looking to play PSO2 once it’s here in 2020. 

Ori and the Blind Forest 2 finally getting a release date was great. The original is a fantastic game if you haven’t checked it out yet and what they showed in the release date trailer looked fantastic – even if it did have a freakin giant spider focus. 

I’m not a fan of the Outlast style of horror games (I prefer being able to fight back even if it’s a worthless idea to do so), but the Blair Witch game looks like it’s really well done and people who enjoy that sort of thing will likely love it. I’m looking forward to watching Scary Game Squad play it at the very least. 

The Age of Empires 2 remaster looks beautiful and I know there’s still a more than sizable AoE 2 community that’s likely losing their minds about it. Even I’ll probably pick it up and remind myself how trash I am at real-time strategy games. 

Moving on to other conferences, Doom Eternal looks great. I think we all knew what we’d be getting, but it’s still nice to see so much gameplay and have it confirmed. 

We finally got to see some Bloodlines 2 gameplay. Granted it was barely shown in the conference proper, which I’ll get into in another section, but what was actually shown in the video raised my optimism for the title – especially the brief dialogue option glimpse we got. I still think the game will be a watered-down version of its predecessor gameplay/design-wise, but maybe not as much as I initially thought. 

Watch Dogs Legions looks fantastic, even if they did kinda try to sell it as a bit more than it really is. Watch Dogs 2 was fine, but it looks like Ubisoft is finally getting the franchise right on the third try and not just trying to outright copy GTA. Good for them. 

I know a lot of our members are ecstatic to see Final Fantasy 8 get a remaster. It’s one of my least favorite FFs, but even I might finally give it a 2nd playthrough now.

I’m sure I’m missing some things, but I’m not a big fan of purely cinematic reveals/announcements and believe-it-or-not but I’m trying to keep this as short as possible. 

The Bad

You’ll never be able to convince me that the studio behind Enslaved and Hellblade decided on its own to make a 4v4 online multiplayer-only title. It sickens me to see something like Bleeding Edge from Ninja Theory, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s happening after they were bought by Microsoft over a year ago. The timing and circumstances just screams sellout to me, and it looks like the beginning of a very generic, fad-chasing end for a once promising studio. 

Speaking of disappointments, I could write a novella about how far back my eyes rolled in regards to EA’s Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. It’s sad it took them 7 – 8 years to think, “Let’s make Force Unleashed 3!” I don’t think they deserve any credit or goodwill for doing the bare minimum after all this time. It’s cheap, low-hanging fruit to distract everyone from their shittiness. And sadly it’s going to work like a charm.  

I don’t really know what to say about Square’s Avengers game. It just looked and sounded terrible. Yeah, they may not have shown gameplay yet, but those were still in-engine graphics. Nolan North literally delivers his lines in the trailer with Nathan Drake’s voice. The writing is so clearly on the wall of this lazy attempt/shitshow that it baffles me some people are still trying to justify and/or overlook it. 

The Bethesda Conference was exactly as bad as most of us predicted it’d be, right down to the cringey Woo Guy. Yes, it ended strong with Doom Eternal, but are we really going to give Bethesda any credit for ID Software doing what they do best? I don’t think we should. Fallout 76 BR feels like a joke that went too far. The vast majority of Bethesda’s conference was a joke, and the only reason it doesn’t fall under “the ugly” is because we all saw it coming from a mile away. 

I think Sony not appearing was a bad decision. They just handed Microsoft a bunch of brownie points for no real reason. Most of the conferences were weak and there’s no doubt in my mind Sony still could’ve showed up and gave Microsoft a run for its money while also giving us another conference to care about. There are a lot of games up Sony’s sleeve still slated for this year that I would’ve liked to see/hear about – but, like the Bethesda bit, kinda hard to be too disappointed when you knew it was coming from a mile away. 

The Ugly

The entire PC Gaming Show was appalling. The games themselves were mostly fine, but the organization and delivery of the show itself was godawful. They spent just as much, if not more, time telling us what they were about to tell us than just fucking telling us. I don’t need a full synopsis of a trailer before you show it. That’s literally the point of a trailer! And the “interviews” were freakin cringe, unnecessary and ultimately just time slot padding most of the time. I hated it. 

Why does Gears 5 look like a fan fiction writer got ahold of the franchise? Is that what happened? Personally, I stopped at Gears 3 and haven’t gotten caught up, but the entire presentation was cringe-inducing to me. Why did the separate generic game mode get a longer, more detailed trailer than the core game itself? If I didn’t care before then I damn sure don’t care now. 

The FFVII Remake’s combat system looks atrocious (sure, it’s pretty, but I’m talking gameplay/design-wise) – primarily because IT’S THE GARBAGE ASS FFXIII STAGGER SYSTEM! I know some people won’t care, and that some of you crazies actually liked FFXIII, but that nearly automated bullet sponge combat system irritated the hell out of me. It’s one of the worst parts of FFXII and they brought it to the FFVII remake. It’s going to make battles, especially bosses, tedious as fuck and make weapons/attacks feel neutered as hell. It’s the final nail in the coffin I needed to ensure I’m not shelling out for the remake – and I used to be a massive FF/Square fanboy. 

The Nintendy

I’m separating Nintendo because the company basically separates itself. 

It’s important to note that I’m not a big Nintendo fan. I don’t have any negativity for the company either. I just didn’t grow up playing Nintendo games as much as everyone else and don’t have the same visceral nostalgic feelings that others do. That being said, I fully believe Nintendo is killing it right now and there’s such a large amount of interesting exclusive titles for the Switch that I just might get one here soon. 

Nintendo started strong with Luigi’s Manson 3. I’m not a crazed fan – didn’t even play the second – but that trailer was one of the best game trailers/presentations I’ve seen in a long time. It focused on gameplay and design, and sold me on it. If I get a Switch, I could definitely see myself picking the game up. 

Nothing else really hit all that hard for me from Nintendo Direct. I was kinda hoping for just a few more Switch-only titles to really finish selling the system to me, and I didn’t really get that. I also thought they’d show more about the new Switch versions too but they didn’t even touch on them in the conference. 

The retro game collections were a bit of a turn off too, making some of the newer games for those franchises feel like half-assed attempts purely meant to sell the collections. I hear Nintendo is having a lot of issues with its online platform too, so maybe it’s not the best time to hawk such wares but you can always rely on Nintendy to be Nintendy. 

The Final Verdict – Good Enough

I ultimately think every gaming fan got at least a little something that they wanted out of E3. Most of us wanted a Cyberpunk 2077 release date and we didn’t have to wait long to get it either. The conferences weren’t as bombastic as some of us remember from years long gone, but it’s also a very different show/convention than it used to be now that it’s consumer-centric and open to the public. 

What did you think about the conferences though? Did you get what you were looking for out of E3? How much of a tasteless dumbass am I for not mentioning and/or liking your favorite things? Feel free to let me know in the comments below or in our Discord!

Thanks for skimming,

Locke Kosta