E3 2021 Predictions & Wishes

Capcom announced that their digital event is Monday, 2:30pm PT / 5:30pm ET. Right now, the only games we know it will include are:

  • The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
  • Monster Hunter Stories 2
  • Monster Hunter Rise
  • Resident Evil Village

Two of those are already out, so I'm assuming we'll get information on June's DLC for Monster Hunter Rise and one last major marketing push for Stories 2 before it releases next month. I can't imagine what Village would have aside from maybe a DLC announcement, though I'm curious what it would be (perhaps DLC that has you playing as Chris during the events of the game?)

There's rumors going around of a Dragon's Dogma 2 being developed using RE Engine, but the question is whether that's ready to be shown yet. Ever since Capcom changed their approach to development/publishing following RE6, they haven't had nearly as many titles in development or rotation. I'm not sure what we can come to expect. Pragmata was already announced, so if they were going to be showcasing that I'd expect it to be part of the provided bulleted list.

I dunno, I'm curious to see what they have. Capcom's been on a roll since 2017 and I'm wondering if they can keep the hot streak going or if they'll suffer an unfortunate combo breaker.

Panic's Playdate Update:

I've been into Panic Inc's products since like 1999 so I am planning to get one of these for sure.

It’s the Battlefield reveal tomorrow afternoon (in the UK.) I’m extremely excited. Fingers crossed they’ve got it right. I effectively skipped the last two games. I meant to get to them late but realising many of the players I followed where underwhelmed and I went off on other tangents gaming wise.

Glad I’m heading to a beautiful sandstone church in the morning for a meeting of my main art group (it’s been a while and it’ll be lovely to see whoever turns up.) It’ll also distract me and I’ll feel like I’ve been pretty productive for the day so when, as is likely, a complete lack of productivity happens in the afternoon I won’t feel too bad.

Rykin wrote:

Panic's Playdate Update:

I've been into Panic Inc's products since like 1999 so I am planning to get one of these for sure.

It's funny how excited I am for something that I'm going to buy and then forget to play.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Rykin wrote:

Panic's Playdate Update:

I've been into Panic Inc's products since like 1999 so I am planning to get one of these for sure.

It's funny how excited I am for something that I'm going to buy and then forget to play.

I am interested in trying to develop for it. I used to spend hours making Faces for Panic's Audion mp3 player back in the day. I will totally be downloading the SDK and messing around with it once I get one.

Higgledy wrote:

It’s the Battlefield reveal tomorrow afternoon (in the UK.) I’m extremely excited. Fingers crossed they’ve got it right. I effectively skipped the last two games. I meant to get to them late but realising many of the players I followed where underwhelmed and I went off on other tangents gaming wise.

Glad I’m heading to a beautiful sandstone church in the morning for a meeting of my main art group (it’s been a while and it’ll be lovely to see whoever turns up.) It’ll also distract me and I’ll feel like I’ve been pretty productive for the day so when, as is likely, a complete lack of productivity happens in the afternoon I won’t feel too bad.

I'm curious to see what it's going to be. Rumor is it'll be Battlefield 2042 and be near future. Evidently their social media is going nuts right now, and even some of their older Battlefield games have weird glitched out effects that are no doubt leading to the reveal tomorrow.

ccesarano wrote:

I'm curious to see what it's going to be. Rumor is it'll be Battlefield 2042 and be near future. Evidently their social media is going nuts right now, and even some of their older Battlefield games have weird glitched out effects that are no doubt leading to the reveal tomorrow.

Near future is a good bet. There is a rumour you’ll get your own robot dog to follow you about. Possibly that’s for one class in particular. They obviously want to allow for selling outfits and cosmetics so near future means they can be more creative with the outfits.

Yeah, it sounds like the teaser campaign is getting a ton of traction.

Rykin wrote:

Panic's Playdate Update:

I've been into Panic Inc's products since like 1999 so I am planning to get one of these for sure.

...I don't get it. A bunch of mobile games on a monochrome screen without a backlight for $200? Seems like a novelty item.

Djinn wrote:
Rykin wrote:

Panic's Playdate Update:

I've been into Panic Inc's products since like 1999 so I am planning to get one of these for sure.

...I don't get it. A bunch of mobile games on a monochrome screen without a backlight for $200? Seems like a novelty item.

That is totally fair actually and maybe it will be nothing more than a novelty. IDGAF I still want one

It is, indeed, Battlefield 2042.

Official gameplay reveal on Sunday, June 13th. Curious if it'll be a part of Microsoft's press conference.

It's certainly big and bombastic, though I can't help but find it strange they sampled Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue to try and sound epic. Nothing screams world war like a song about a drug overdose.

The music washed over me. No where near as effective a choice as Seven Nation Army for Battlefield 1. It was odd they had so many soldiers crowded into every scene but I suspect they were trying to emphasise that there are going to be a lot of players in each match. That said, I'd think the trailer is exactly what Battlefield fans wanted to see. It's very reminiscent of Battlefield 4.

Rykin wrote:

That is totally fair actually and maybe it will be nothing more than a novelty. IDGAF I still want one ;)

Heh, fair enough. I do think the games look neat -- I love game jam type games -- but it's the hardware that I dislike. If this Playdate Season 1 was a $29.99 Switch game I'd be in, but not as a standalone system. I'm curious to see how this does on the market.

Updated the top post with more events and times now that they have gotten that info out.

Elden Ring trailer has happened. Twas fantastic.

I'll share stuff that stood out to me after a work meeting. Some nice trailers and announcements, especially as it was intended to be the event that kicks off E3, but something about Geoff Keighly and his approach to these events just brings out the cynicism in me. Bringing up all kinds of celebrity guests and bands that may be relevant, but feel either like ham-fisted imitation of other industries that aren't video games or a desperate groveling for legitimacy from those very industries.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. After all, it's not like the celebrities present weren't related to the games they were announcing. It just felt so superficial, artificial, and, again, imitating what other industries have done rather than just accepting we're a different industry with an audience that cares about different things.

Still, I don't like being a cynic or snarky these days as it only makes myself and others miserable, so I'll instead highlight the things that did interest me. Chief of which was Elden Ring. January 21st, 2022, folks. Not this year, but at least we have a release date.

And Sable has a release date: September 23.

ccesarano wrote:

Chief of which was Elden Ring. January 21st, 2022, folks. Not this year, but at least we have a release date.

There are two great things about Elden Ring being shown.

1) It looks fantastic.

2) Now we don't have to suffer through "where is Elden Ring" overtaking the conversation in every other conference.

Dyni wrote:

2) Now we don't have to suffer through "where is Elden Ring" overtaking the conversation in every other conference.

Truth.

I'll confess the show had me startled early on with the announcement of a tactical Metal Slug game, but I'm down for it.

Salt and Sacrifice has me curious. I played Salt and Sanctuary earlier this year and found it to be... a mixed bag. I enjoyed it, but then there were moments that were incredibly frustrating, especially in the inability to deal with the 2-D side-scrolling limitation at certain points. By the end, a lot of the normal enemies and encounters were more grating and infuriating than the bosses, who became more and more easy to defeat. I basically rolled through the final few bosses only to hit a stumbling block on the last. Hopefully Salt and Sacrifice can make some major improvements.

At least it has online co-op this time (I believe Salt and Sanctuary was local only). Currently only slated for PC, PS4, and PS5.

The first look at Evil Dead: The Game is... mixed. The gameplay looks like it could be incredibly jank, clunky, or just all around slow. It's described as co-op and PvP, so hopefully that means non-competitive options are available.

I guess other than those above and another look at Back 4 Blood, there wasn't much that had me super hyped until Elden Ring, and boy howdy was that a show stealer.

I haven't tried any of the more recent From Software games but from what I did play of Dark Souls I don't get it. I keep thinking I should give it a third shot or try one of the newer games, but then I decide to play something I am more likely to enjoy instead. I get that there is a market for hard games, but what I played wasn't hard it was cheap bullsh*t mixed with bad controls. One time I died due to falling off of a cliff when I tried to pick up an item that an enemy dropped close to the edge and then went back and my souls were there right next to the edge and I tried to be even more careful when picking them up this time and ended up falling off the damn cliff again because the controls were complete sh*te and trying to do anything that required a little precision was super frustrating. I enjoyed Ninja Gaiden back in both the NES days and the OG Xbox days and those games were filled with cheap bullsh*t but at least they had decent controls.

ccesarano wrote:

I'll confess the show had me startled early on with the announcement of a tactical Metal Slug game, but I'm down for it.

Ugh, why does it have to be a roguelite? This would be a perfect tactics game if it had a story and hand-crafted levels. All this wonderful style is wasted on procedurally generated maps.

Ah I’m less interested. I was thinking it was a story campaign based thing. I did recently get into Enter the Gungeon though so I can at least see the appeal of roguelikes (not sure I have the skill to progress much further with ETG despite loving the game) but it’s a tougher sell for me.

Rykin wrote:

I haven't tried any of the more recent From Software games but from what I did play of Dark Souls I don't get it… I enjoyed Ninja Gaiden back in both the NES days and the OG Xbox days and those games were filled with cheap bullsh*t but at least they had decent controls.

Just to give you my perspective on this to maybe help explain why some folks, including me, love these games:

I was late to Playstation games so I got to experience extremely popular series only fairly recently. When I tried Resident Evil 5 and the Metal Gear: Ground Zeroes I was surprised to find that both games seem to have truly awful control systems. I couldn’t see how anyone could force themselves to play one of the games let alone be a hardened fan of an entire series based on that style of gameplay. I railed against RE5 especially but some years later, at what must have been a very low point for games, I gave it another try, played and enjoyed it (the same happened with Ground Zeroes although I don’t really connect with Kojima’s style of games/storytelling.)

I think there are control systems, often in Sony games, that feel horribly awkward to start with but, once you’ve learnt them, they stop feeling janky at all. Probably because the player learns to operate within it their perimeters and how to do all they need to do in the game even if it isn’t at all intuitive at the outset.

Another aspect is the experience you want from a control scheme and combat and whether that fits with what is in the game. People who prefer very fast paced combat often seem to find Dark Souls lacking. I enjoy slower more deliberate gameplay. A back and forth where you are manoeuvring, waiting for openings and watching what your enemy is doing. Dark Souls does that particular, deliberate style of combat well but I can see it not being to your taste.

Lastly, I think we all forgive a lot in games if their worlds, art style and combat is compelling to us. I aquired Dark Souls free on 360 and only started playing to prove once and for all how bad a game it was. I immediately fell in love with the slow ass combat and found the world with it’s puzzle box layout and ‘tip of the iceberg’ style storytelling to be a delight. I don’t remember ever feeling that the controls were bad or that there was excessive bullsh*t but that’s probably because I was so into the experience that, if I died, I was just focused on getting further next time.

I get you, Rykin, and I also know how annoying it can be to have folks telling you over and over again to give something a try or tell you you're playing it wrong. There's a reason, I think, that Bloodborne is the only From game I stuck with. It actually feels spiritually close to Resident Evil 4 to me in how I feel when playing it. However, it's also the one game where I feel many of From's greatest flaws (enemies that swivel and slide mid-swing even if you move/dodge out of the way of their original targeted position, awkward "platforming", dodgy framerate (on consoles), etc.) are at their minimum. At the same time, I like faster paced action games, and Bloodborne is certainly that compared to Dark Souls (though not to Sekiro, which was too much for me).

I'd recommend looking into Souls-like adjacents instead that may be more forgiving or something, but there are few with the same degree of polish (despite From needing more polish than on offer most times).

As for today, we have Tribeca Games Spotlight at 2pm ET and the Koch Primetime at 3pm ET.

Oh Tribeca are the Kena: Bridge of spirits folks. May have to watch that.

The Koch Media presentation is awful.

I'm the sort of guy that has watched a few of Capcom's R&D PowerPoint Presentations for the RE Engine, so sterile conversations about things developers talk about is within my wheelhouse. But these are questions and trivia intended for marketing purposes and therefore are never going to be in-depth, are going to try to talk the game up, but due so in as simple and broad ways possible. They finally showed some trailers for a couple games, but those trailers were uploaded yesterday and rarely actually communicate anything.

This presentation also made me realize how many of these presentations, be it Geoff's or Tribeca's, include introductions to games presented as if everyone's still on stage. There hasn't been an adaptation to the streaming format. They kept the same script as if they'd be on stage and just recorded everything in people's houses or sound studios. This is not at all learning from Nintendo's strategy of swiftly paced, informative, rapid-fire announcements and reveals with little fat in-between (and Nintendo learned from Konami, in the final years they were actually making games). I can give Sony a lot of crap for stealing Nintendo's approach and making it sterile, but at least they get it.

Koch's Prime Matter stream really is one of the worst approaches I've seen, though.

A few more trailers from yesterday's stuff has been posted so here are some of the ones that haven't been posted here yet:

So convenient! Thanks, Rykin!

And here are some more:

There’s a new Sifu trailer. The game looks more brutal than in the first trailer. It’d be good to know when it’s coming out. Sounds like this year at some stage.

That Wild West Dynasty trailer is the worst. Here was my thought stream as I watched:

"Oh this is from Lego?"
"Oh it's some knockoff Lego set"
"Huh, you have to build it yourself"
"Wow, looks complicated to build even with three people. Who's going to spend all their time doing that."
"What's a biome?"
"Oh it's an augmented reality game!"
"Neat idea but its going to take too much time to build those sets."
"Wait it's a video game?"
"Wow those graphics look terrible."
"Wait 3D printer? What the hell is this?"
"What is going on?"
"Enough with the looping music!"
"Just show me what the game is!!!"
"Please..."
"Ok the game isn't Lego after all. It's realistic."
"The trailer is over?"
"They didn't even show what type of game this is going to be!!!"
"I need to post my thoughts to the thread"