The North Korean Summit: A Fantasy of War and Peace

One thing I love about E3 is that the sheer volume of gaming news, gaming discussion, and gaming debates drowns out the rest of the world. I could finally ignore all the endless pro-Trump and anti-Trump drumbeats that pollute this planet. Instead I could focus on stupid video games. Children getting thrown into cages? Sorry, I need to think up my Beyond Good and Evil 2 take. Concentration camps at the border? That sure sucks, but so did Square Enix's press conference. My greatest horrors of anti-immigration racism coming true? ...That Tunic game looks cute though! Sadly now it is Tuesday, the distracting circus of hype is over, and the gaming press is currently on a week-long hangover. Time to talk about that other, less fun media circus from last week.

Last Tuesday Donald Trump signed a thing with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I call it a "thing" because I don't still don't know what it was. The whole affair sure looked like a major peace accord. There was a piece of paper with signatures on it. News people took pictures of two world leaders shaking hands. Somebody even cooked up a fake trailer. In some ways, the Singapore meeting was the ultimate E3 press conference. It was a big self-congratulations full of pomp and glitz, with no real substance at all.

I know this post might seem hypocritical considering what I wrote about North Korea last year. In case you've forgotten: I said we should back down because Trump's threats were stupid and dangerous. So from that perspective, I'm fully behind the president meeting with Kim Jong Un, shaking his hand, and turning down the heat. I'm glad he's defusing the very tensions he stirred up, but I still have to ask: "what does this mean?" I can't say "oh, Trump did something good" before I know what he did. Especially when I suspect the entire thing was a sham from the start. [Insert obvious Final Fantasy VII Remake joke here.]

E3 2018 Games I Want to Talk About

E3 2018 was a really good E3. If you like games, you probably now have at least half a dozen must-buy titles. I watched the press conferences while doing some mental accounting and realized that this show will probably cost my future self somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars in video games. All indications are that 2019 is going to be a ridiculous year in gaming, as good as 2017 if not better.

As for 2018... well, it's mostly a holding pattern at this point. At least I have time to go back and play Super Mario Odyssey now. It seems like the gaming industry fled 2018 en mass so now the first three months of 2019 will be jam-packed with electronic riches beyond your wildest imagination. Or possibly it will all get delayed to 2020. Take your time, video games, I still need to play Nioh.

What's really crazy is that by usual standards, E3 2018 should have sucked. Square Enix embarrassed themselves by coming to the show empty-handed. I can name more games that Nintendo should have shown than games Nintendo did show. (Where is Yoshi?? I'm angrier about Yoshi missing E3 than Final Fantasy VII.) Even Sony's conference was pretty bleh. And EA was EA, as usual. Yet there's still mountains of games. E3 2018 is like the greatest Christmas toy catalogue of all time. I have no idea how I'll be able to cover everything I want to talk about. So strap in, because there are thousands of words coming.