Last year there was no official E3 thanks to a pandemic you might have heard about in the news. With E3 2020 cancelled, the usual downpour of gaming news instead trickled out slowly over the summer. It wasn't an E3 by name, but it was an extra-long E3 in spirit. Honestly, E3 2021 needs as much of an asterisk as last year. There was no physical event. The LA Convention Center remained closed and empty. Everybody, from industry insiders to professional media to fans, all shared the experience the same way - on their computers at home. It's egalitarian.
Personally, I love the accessibility of E3 this year. About forty indie demos dropped on Xbox and PC. So instead of needing to wander the floor, hunting for something cool, you can play that something cool at home right now. You didn't need a GameSpot badge to see Square Enix's over-long look at Guardians of the Galaxy. Instead, SE made you watch it during a very dull stream. Yeah, the actual E3 insider experience isn't all glamorous, sometimes its watching uninteresting stuff like that in backroom presentations. Speaking of the duller side of E3, you got to see it on Monday. Lots of random exhibitors like Verizon, "VoltEdge LLC", and "The Sensorium Corporation" fill up space on those floors. Monday's streams of Verizon and Razer were just like wandering the outer edge of the South Floor, all of it filler.
Covid-19 has definitely put a big pause on the industry's grand plans, and that's reflected in this E3. Most of the big AAA games are still a mess. The pandemic only just ended for some people in lucky areas, and still is raging at full force for most of the world. So let's not pretend that's over by any means. It was a disappointing E3 if you wanted a lot of big games this year or many answers. But it was a great E3 if you wanted smaller indie games. I'll have more to say about them tomorrow. There's still a ton to discuss in the non-indie space. Too much to say, in fact.
Let's go:
What Missed E3
First off, I'd like to talk about the elephants that weren't in the room this E3.
Obviously the biggest elephant of them all is a company called Sony, who were absent entirely. They have this device called the PlayStation 5 that is very hard to find. Maybe they were busy rushing them off the factory floor. Sony skipped E3 2019, and I guess they will never be back. Sony had no show this time, has no show scheduled, and might not have a big summer event at all. There's not even a rumor of one. They showed Horizon: Forbidden West a few weeks ago, and Kena: Bridge of Spirits appeared a few times. That's it. I note Final Fantasy XVI's absence. Sony might have demanded that game be held back for their future reveals. Or Square Enix legitimately had nothing to show.
It is hard to tell what is strategy and what is simply empty pockets these days
Microsoft, meanwhile, got to have the show to themselves without their biggest console rival. They built a lot of hype around the games they showed. A few minutes of mood-setting for Starfield was very exciting for some. I'd like to see more first, personally. That was a nothing-burger trailer if you don't love Bethesda already. Meanwhile, I noticed that Microsoft showed a lot of games last year that are totally absent now. There's no Avowed, no Fable, no Everwild (more on that later), no Perfect Dark, no The Gunk, no Scorn, and almost nothing of Hellblade 2. Microsoft purchased a big fancy grab bag of studios years ago. But the investments still haven't paid off.
Let's talk about the non-platform holders. EA was not here, but they are having a show in July. I do not expect a great show from them because EA never has a great show. A lot of companies like Capcom seemed to only have conferences to make the ESA happy. Take-Two and Koch Media had conferences that embodied classic "this meeting could have been an email" energy. This was an E3 where a lot of companies sure seemed reluctant to show anything. Nobody has a big slate of solid releases for 2021, except notably Nintendo.
Beyond Good and Evil 2 is in Development Hell again. It will never get cancelled but Ubisoft is going to need to show me proof of life of that thing before I believe in it. Its director, Michel Ancel, quit Ubisoft last fall to go support a wildlife sanctuary, carefully dodging all the abuse allegations swirling around that company and him. All signs point to this being the second time a game called "Beyond Good and Evil 2" has fallen into ruin. Ubisoft also has that pirate ship game Skull & Bones, which missed another E3. Fewer tears shall be shed for that game's misfortune, however.
Star Citizen is... yeah, whatever the Hell that mess is. Not here.
Bayonetta 3 continues to not be a game.
Metroid Dread
Metroid Prime 4 continues to not be a game. Oh well. That game basically
restarted production altogether in 2019. 2020 was a wasted year for most developers, so don't expect much soon. In the mean time, a different game came back from the dead. The first Metroid Dread project was cancelled over a decade ago. It's back. Stay hopeful, fans, anything can happen. And anyway, in Dread, I think we got something better than Prime 4.
I don’t want to crap on fans of Metroid Prime. But I’m
trying to imagine what a big budget FPS Metroid game could be in the current
decade. I don't think Nintendo is the company to make that. I’d love to see a company like Sony use their full narrative powers tell Samus Aran’s story. Imagine a Metroid game that actually paid off the Alien-iconography and horror elements. Nintendo isn’t doing that. I’m betting instead there’s
a bare-bones story with a mostly silent Samus. And after Other M, I really don’t
want them to try more than that. Series producer Yoshio Sakamoto is heavily involved in this game, and I respectfully ask that he not try to write Samus as a person ever again.
Considering what this series is and what it can
be, Metroid 5 AKA Metroid Dread, is maybe as good as it is going to get. This is apparently the "ending" of the saga in some way, which is about as meaningful as Kingdom Hearts III being the last Xehanort game. Bullshit.
Metroid Dread looks great. Samus' new mostly-white suit looks great. The game is developed by Mercury Steam, who created the 3DS Metroid 2 remake from a few years ago. That game looked like a lot of fun, and they're getting a bigger game now. The 2.5D graphics look smooth - suspiciously smooth. (Can this run on a regular Switch? I wonder.) I love the addition of melee attacks, speeding up the action of Samus' charging down alien hallways.
Graphically, there’s a lot of depth and detail in the rooms. This is Metroid daring to step up and take on Ori and the Will of the Wisps on the field of Metroidvania gorgeousness. They won't win that fight, but at least they're trying. I love the rhythm of the gameplay that’s been shown so far. I love that the usual sidecrolling shooting is broken up by stealth segments against these unbeatable scary robot enemies. There’s even chase sequences. It isn't much, but this could put fear back into Metroid.
Metroid Dread is out for the Nintendo Switch on October 8th, 2021. Thath means Samus is wearing white after Labor Day. Watch out, fashion police.
Breath of the Wild 2
We didn’t get Bayonetta 3, we didn’t get Metroid Prime 4, but one out of three ain’t bad! The unnamed Breath of the Wild sequel is planned for a release next year, probably late next year, which probably really means 2023. But don’t worry Zelda fans, in the meantime we get an HD remaster of Skyward Sword. Sadly, rumors of new Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ports have come to naught. So it's Skyward Sword or nothing this year.
I choose nothing.
We did actually get to see more of Breath of the Wild 2,
however. The focus this time seems to be the same beautiful Hyrule open world,
but with an added dimension. Skyward Sword is influencing the game in terms of floating islands and aerial dungeons. Maybe the open world
climbing mechanics of BOTW will allow Nintendo to finally fulfill the promise
Skyward Sword offered years ago: a huge open sea of clouds full of life and
danger. Instead of a dead, empty overworld that only wasted your time. Skyward Sword was bad ten years ago and is still bad today. BOTW2 probably will be very good.
Now, let’s talk about the bad news: Princess Zelda. Everybody wants a playable Princess Zelda in this game. That is, everybody except Nintendo themselves, who we all know will never do that for the same awful reasons that Nintendo does so many other things. (Like threatening streamers who wanted to co-stream their Tuesday conference.) Now, obviously Zelda will not be playable in this game and thinking otherwise is utter madness. We even see the Princess fall into the void, gone forever. Might as well have tripped into a fridge.
Yet, hope still lingers in the darkness! Link has really long hair in a few shots. Link has never had a crew cut or anything, but this a level of fashion fabulousness is something I'm not used to from him. Maybe he's hanging out with the Shin Megami Tensei V protagonist, or maybe... it's not Link at all. We don't see the character's face in these action shots. Are we sure that's Link? Could that just be Zelda adventuring on her own?
I have no hope. But I refuse to give up! Never let the dream die!
Breath of the Wild 2 is out in theory in 2022, for... something. The Switch situation is a bit weird right now.
Super Switch Pro??
The bigger, stranger question is just what console Breath of the Wild 2 will actually play on. It probably will work for the regular Switch, since the rumors are the new console will be a half-step upgrade like the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Yet those Switch Pro rumors get louder every passing
week. We still have heard nothing official. I fully believe there’s a Switch Pro
hiding somewhere at this point, but when will we see it? We didn't see it on Tuesday, that's all I know.
Gamers love to hate their media sources. You could look at all this Switch Pro news that fizzled this E3 and dismiss it as mere "fake news" and move on. I think there's fire hiding in this cloud of smoke. If you're going to call a shot like Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki did on May 26th, predicting a Switch Pro announcement around E3, you are not talking out of your ass. Nobody is out there in press rooms rubbing their hands and cackling wickedly in their dastardly plan to "fool the gamers". This was a professional report that put the reputation of Bloomberg News on the line. There's hard evidence somewhere. The Switch Pro is real. It's coming soon. Bloomberg's reporting is far too specific and exact to be merely rumors.
Yet E3 rolled by with nothing at all on this front. Nintendo said their Direct on Tuesday would be all software. We should not be surprised when it failed to deliver a new console. Yet when Breath of the Wild 2 was pushed back to a vague 2022 slot, nobody mentioned that it was due to any technical limitations. Nintendo has a lot of games on the docket that keep missing E3s. We have no explanation as to what they're waiting for. Nothing Nintendo showed seemed that beyond the capabilities of a Switch to run. Though clearly something is in the works.
It's pretty frustrating. I'd love a new Switch, especially as indie games get more and more technically impressive. My old jalopy 2018 Switch console can run visual novels fine. But I've played games like Haven and Umurangi Generation which look like pixel-y shit compared to their PC versions. A few companies are already making PC-like tablets to compete with the Switch. Even Valve is rumored to be making one. There's pressure for Nintendo to step-up. I know that's silly to say as Switches sell ridiculous numbers. Then there's the global chip shortage that has so hampered most people's abilities to get a PS5 or a graphics card. Maybe it isn't just the pandemic holding Nintendo back.
Who? What? Where? When? Sadly, it will all remain unsatisfying for now. You can hurt yourself thinking about this too hard.
A Web of Kojima Conspiracies
-Correction 6/25- - I'll have to take the L on this one. All evidence points to Abandoned and Blue Box Game Studios being exactly what they say they are. They ultimately never showed Abandoned this month, delaying the reveal to August. But the story seems to point towards them being just a small studio way over their heads. It was a fun conspiracy while it lasted.
Konami, make a Silent Hill game.
Speaking of mysteries, here's a Kojima one. Hideo Kojima should not be here since had very little to announce this E3. He appeared at Summer Game Fest with Goeff Keighley, unwilling to discuss anything of his studio's next game except to reveal that there is a next game. He did share a a teaser for a "Director's Cut" of Death Stranding, which came with a lot of Metal Gear Solid iconography. The trailer might have really been about moving on from the series. Kojima keeps saying he's done with Metal Gear and Konami. But this teaser sure had the energy of "My 'Not involved in Metal Gear' T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.". He's fucking with you.
Who knows? "Director's Cut" is a meaningless term in the video game space, I bet this is just a PS5-port for Death Stranding and not much else.
However, then there's the other story. This is where the conspiracies get wild.
If you recall, Hideo Kojima left Konami under some nasty circumstances. Metal Gear Solid V released with an incomplete story, and there was the bitter cancellation of Silent Hills. Everybody loved P.T., and then that story ended in tragedy. If you're a Silent Hill fan, it's been a sad few years. More like a sad decade, since Konami was already treating the franchise poorly with mediocre sequels and outright terrible HD ports before killing it entirely. Konami largely doesn't want to make video games. "Fuck you" is their answer to the fans. So Silent Hill fans have nothing. Nothing but rumors and conspiracies.
That leads us to Abandoned. (Maybe meaning "Abandoned" like a certain other game.) This is an indie survival horror game made by a studio called Blue Box based out of the Netherlands. They released a trailer in April that showed exactly nothing about the game. I am to understand that the creepy brown woods in the trailer are actually pre-made Unreal Engine assets. Just who are Blue Box Studios? They're apparently nobodies with very little online footprint led by a faceless dev named Hasan Hahraman, which might be an alias. Somehow this tiny studio has the resources to release a next-gen video game and acquire deep connections with Sony's marketing arm and Kojima's friend Geoff Keighley. They've also uniquely been granted a special PS5 app to release this Tuesday that will play trailers for the game, a very unusual privilege that no other game has ever been granted. This simply does not make sense.
Normally, if you're a small studio, you're out there fighting for Steam Wishlist rankings and pushing your game as hard as you can with Kickstarters and whatever. It's so difficult to get bandwidth these days, so how did Blue Box, of all things, manage this? Indie survival horror games are dime a dozen. There's a million P.T. clones that have been attempted. What is special about this? Then there's Blue Box's Twitter account trolling people with tweets like "Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L)." (Silent Hill?) Then they quickly disavowed any connection to Konami.
Kojima has done this before. Metal Gear Solid V started its media cycle in 2012 as a fake game made by a shell company, Moby Dick Studio, supposedly in Sweden. Nobody was fooled though at the time. If Blue Box Game Studios is another troll, it is a much more successful version of an old gag. As for me, I don't know what this is. Is Konami or Kojima involved? Who knows? You can be Charlie Kelly in the mail room and pull a million tiny details and threads together to fit your conspiracy narrative that this is Silent Hills. Jason Schreirer of Bloomberg believes the conspiracy now. If this is some kind of ARG, it's a fun one.
All I know is that Blue Box Game Studios and Abandoned are not what they seem. We'll find out more on Tuesday when that next trailer drops.
Final Fantasy is HERE TO KILL CHAOS!!!
It is the most hilarious game of E3, and it is not a comedy. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is Final Fantasy’s answer to the
Souls genre. We all knew this day was coming eventually. Technically this is
more of a Nioh than a Dark Souls, as it comes from Team Ninja. Everybody should have been talking about the gameplay and combat depth after this reveal. Instead we were too busy laughing at the aggro bullshit this game is trying to sell. It all became funnier when the demo dropped completely broken and unplayable on Sunday, only to be fixed a day later. Thank you, poor developer who had to spend all day crunching to fix whatever went wrong in your code.
Character designer Tetsuya Nomura calls this game his story of an “angry man”. And oh boy, is our playable character angry. Jack, the hero of this game, spends most of the trailer curb-stomping helpless Bombs and Goblins who all shatter into red crystals to cover up the gore. He’s angry about Chaos and wants to kill Chaos. Nobody knows why. The reasons don't matter, just remember that Jack is angry and and he's going to kill Chaos. The trailer really hammers home those points. It all feels like some horrible flashback to the disgustingly macho era of video games from 2008. Fans would have cheered Jack in the PS3-era. He would have fit in right next to Kratos and awful trash like Kane & Lynch. In 2021, the fans want long blue flowing hair from totally androgynous JRPG heroes, not this.
And yeah, as a reimagining of Final Fantasy I, this is ugly and awful in every way.
*BUT* I have played the demo for Stranger of Paradise. First off, Jack can change out of that T-shirt that has people so upset. More importantly though, this game isn’t bad to play. It’s real hard, even on normal. But as a Nioh reskinned as a Final Fantasy, this works quite well. They did the thing. Team Ninja made a fun action game. They also made a CRUSHINGLY HARD boss in Garland at the end of the demo. I can’t beat him, so I have already failed at my job of killing Chaos. However, if you can look past the horrific aesthetic, Final Fantasy Origin might be a good game.
The second phase of Garland's boss theme samples the FFI battle theme. Somebody at least in this dev team can get the mood right.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has no solid release date, vaguely comes out next year. The demo is out on PS5 for at least another week. The game will release on PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Series X.
Elden Ring
Now, if I can’t beat Garland in Stranger of Paradise, what
hope do I have playing an actual Souls game? Probably not a ton. Fromsoft Games
do not come with Easy Modes either, so when I get stuck on the first boss of
this game, that will be the end of my campaign and a waste of my $70. RIP.
Elden Ring was probably the most anticipated game at E3 not called
Zelda, maybe even more anticipated. Fromsoft have been on an unbroken win
streak for over a decade now. They built their own genre with the Souls games and then reinventing it again with Sekiro. George R.
R. Martin, the creator of Game of Thrones himself, has to play second fiddle to
the brand power of this developer. He could be missing from the project and this would still be hyped.
Even as chilly outsider to Souls games, Elden Ring looks awesome. The horse jumps about a
mile in the air. There's a lot of gross monsters with a lot of hands. There’s a very tall lady who shish-kebabs a guy on her sword. Tall
monster ladies are the new hot fetish in gaming; Fromsoft are not immune to trends.
We are back to a dark fantasy world filled with incomprehensible evil and
malice. Turns out adding GRRM to the mix really does not push Fromsoft that far
out of their usual wheelhouse. It looks like Dark Souls 4, which is exactly
what everybody wanted, was it not?
And just to hit all the boxes of gamer hype, this is a Souls
game gone “Open World”. If you’re going to add a horse, you need to add huge
vistas and space to explore in. I’m curious to see how the Fromsoft formula
works outside of tight corridors. Can the magic hit when they have to deal with width and space? You can't troll players constantly with enemies around corners when there are few corners.
Unlike Winds of Winter, Elden Ring won't take ten years or more to write. It is out on January 21st, 2022 for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Series X.
Babylon’s Fail
Babylon’s Fall is the worst story of E3 2021.
This was originally teased at E3 2018 with an utterly inexplicable trailer that did nothing to explain what it was or why we
should care. However, merely telling us the game was from Platinum was enough to get people excited. In December 2019, the game reappeared, now looking like a proper action game. Full-speed full-throttle Bayonetta or Nier Automata
anime killer nonsense. It looked great. I’d also mention that at no point in
either of these reveals did the game imply it was anything other than the kind
of game Platinum has made for over a decade now: single-player character action
extravaganzas.
Now in 2021, suddenly Babylon's Fall is a live-service game? It’s a multiplayer
game? Where the fuck did that come from?? "Live-service" has a nasty reputation in this business, and for good reason. Avengers last year would have been a much better game if not for the live-service elements. The 2019 trailer shows ONE guy
fighting the bad guys. Also, the art style has shifted to a bad photoshop
filter, the action looks way worse, and Babylon's Fall looks like shit. This very
quickly went from the game I was most excited to see from Square Enix at E3
2021 to the worst story of the show. This was terrible marketing and I think there’s
plenty of reason to be legitimately disappointed at the decisions here. You can't hide what your game is forever, you have to be upfront.
This game might be for somebody, it isn't for me. If for some reason this appeals to you, Babylon's Fall will be out on the PS5, PS4, and PC, with no solid release date. There's a beta of some kind happening this summer. Not interested. Go very far away, please.
Everwild Bad News
Here's the second worst story of E3.
The news around Everwild this past year has not been good.
The creative director left months ago. Reports came out describing that the
game has been in development for almost half a decade with still no clear idea
as to what it was. And then it missed E3 2021 completely, which was not a surprise
to me. The cinematic trailer last year was extremely pretty and had a giant salamander puking out fish. But also, that trailer gave no indication that Everwild was a
game anywhere near completion. Turns out Rare were totally lost. They were not lost in a cool “experimental
jazz” way where they stumbled into a hit like Sea of Thieves. This game simply might never come out.
Video Games Chronicle reports that the game has been internally delayed to at least 2024. Apparently work has been completely rebooted. Will we
even get a game with a giant salamander puking out fish? One with a spiritual nature
interaction with friends? Who knows? I really hope they don’t toss out the beautiful
art direction and style when they rethink this title. For all I know when
this reappears it will be a military shooter where you kill salamanders with a
shotgun.
I’m filing this one in my Beyond Good and Evil 2 folder of Sad Disappointment. Maybe it will come out. Maybe it will be great – someday. Until then, just put it away.
Shin Megami Tensei V
I don't want to end on a sad note. Let's end on possibly the best note.
Shin Megami Tensei V was one of the very first titles announced for the Switch, all the way back in January 2017. The wait has been long, but it is finally paying off. Shin Megami Tensei V looks better than I could have possibly imagined. Your player character looks better than I could have possibly imagined! Whatever demon magic worked on that kid's hair, I need to find their salon. If it took four years to make that hair, those were four years were well-spent.
If you look to the last mainline Shin Megami Tensei game, the awesome Shin Megami Tensei IV on the 3DS, it is impressive how much things have advanced. The demons used to be just barely-animated sprites. Exploring the overworld was driving a pixel on a map. NPCs were visual novel flat drawings. Now in SMTV, we have 3D, fully-animated demons, a full world, and jaw-dropping hair physics. This is the best an Atlus game has ever looked. The menus seem to be borrowing the style of Tokyo Mirage Sessions (a tragically underrated game even now). This is the full experience of post-apocalypse demon-infested Tokyo. It has all been fully rendered and it looks awesome.
Atlus has a real bad history with LGBT themes in their games. Somehow, however, they made the most gloriously queer character design of all of E3. Whatever are you, male, female, cis, trans, gay, straight, whatever, you're allowed to be horny for this character. Everybody can agree they're hot, they're beautiful, and we're jealous. Happy pride month, here's a JRPG.
SMTV might just be My Game of E3. My only reservation is that Shin Megami Tensei as a franchise basically stopped updating the battle system decades ago. There’s a bit of variety here or there, but it’s always the same Jack Frost, the same Bufu, and the same fusion system. I’m a bit worried the series has gone stale.
But then I look at the main character’s hair, there’s nothing stale about that. That’s a work of art.
Shin Megami Tensei V is out on November 11th this year for the Nintendo Switch. Hee ho.
...
Anyway, that's only Part 1 of my E3 2021 reaction. I still have a lot of indie demos to play and trailers to watch. So tune in soon for my favorite Indie Games of the Show, when the mood will be much more positive.
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