Ubisoft’s press conferences rarely have a lot of games I’m interested in, but they’ve gotten better over the past couple of years. This year, they started out with an Assassin’s Creed orchestra performance, which was nice.
Their first announcement was Watch Dogs: Legion, which I’m not interested in despite it getting a lot of attention.
Then they announced a TV show called Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet about a group of developers working on a game. This didn’t particularly interest me either, and it felt strange to announce at E3.
Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Phantom Sight, the Adventure Time event in Brawlhalla, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint aren’t really games that interest me either, so you can imagine how this press conference was going for me. Tom Clancy’s elite squad, being mobile, interested me even less, and I’ve never been interested enough in the Just Dance series to be excited by Just Dance 2020.
For Honor: Shadows of the Hitokiri was the most interesting of the games shown so far, and Rainbow Six Quarantine had a cool trailer even if the game itself isn’t really my style.
From there, they moved to The Division 2, announcing upcoming new content as well as a period where the game will be free to play. Apparently they’re also making a Division movie.
Subscription services are big right now (has Devolver parodied that yet?), and Ubisoft spent time talking about its upcoming Uplay Plus service.
Roller Champions doesn’t interest me, but then they finally showed a game that looks cool to me. Gods & Monsters is a mythology-themed story about rescuing the Greek gods, and it looks beautiful. I’m surprised they didn’t show more, since it’s slated for February 25, but right now I’m intrigued.
And… that was that. It was an underwhelming conference, in my opinion, but next we have Square Enix to look forward to tonight!
The PC Gaming Show tends to include a lot of games I’m not particularly interested in, but there are some cool things as well. This time, they started out by announcing Evil Genius 2, but then moved on to Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. I’m pretty interested in that one, since the first Bloodlines has been in my backlog for while a while. Paradox also released an extended trailer.
I’m not particularly interested in Starmancer or the newly-announced Chivalry II, but the game showed after those, Mosaic, looks like it could be interesting. They moved on to show Midnight Ghost Hunt, Unexplored 2, and a short montage of trailers including Mutant Year Zero, Conan Unconquered, and another one I’m excited for, Moons of Madness.
Conan Chop Chop was revealed to be an actual game rather than a joke, and then they showed Last Oasis, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, Zombie Army: Dead War 4, and Remnant: From the Ashes.
Two years ago, Griftlands was revealed and seemed pretty interesting. It’s changed quite a bit, now being a card-based roguelike, so I’m not sure how I feel about it anymore. After that, they showed Planet Zoo.
Then Yu Suzuki took the stage to introduce a new trailer for Shenmue III. I’m tentatively interested in Shenmue despite only watching playthroughs of the first two, but the trailer looks very, very Shenmue.
They announced a new game called Songs of Conquest, a Vermintide 2 update, a base-building game called Per Aspera, talked more about Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, went through a brief montage of trailers, and then showed something called AutoChess.
A few times earlier, they’d mentioned that a love letter to classic JRPGs would be coming up, and then they finally showed it, an indie game called Cris Tales that involves some sort of time travel, from the looks of it. Cris Tales has a demo up on Steam, so I’ll be trying that soon.
After a new game called Valfaris, they talked about Borderlands 3 for a while, then Maneater, and then revealed a new expansion for Terraria. Then they showed some of Telling Lies, which is the next game from the developers of Her Story. They described it as “open world,” which seems mainly related to the amount of freedom you’ll have.
Then they showed Warframe again, followed by an unusual-looking game called Genesis Noir. After a cute stealth game called El Hijo, it was time for one I’d been waiting for: Baldur’s Gate III!
…Except they didn’t actually show anything new from it, just talked about how they came to be working on it and announced a tabletop game set as a prequel to Baldur’s Gate III. So that was a bit disappointing.
That concluded the PC Gaming Show, just in time for Limited Run Games!
Limited Run Games E3 2019 Showcase
Limited Run Games is great if you prefer physical copies of games that otherwise wouldn’t get them. They started out with Night in the Woods, a game I’ve been meaning to get for a while.
What happened next was the absolute best part of the press conference, as they defended the Vita in full JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure style, complete with a screen showing his Stand later on.
Anyway, the actual lineup of final Vita games was Deadbolt, Guacamelee, Super Mutant Alien Assault, Pix the Cat, Revenant Dogma, Mutant Blobs Attack, Rocketbirds, Atari Flashbacks, Super Meat Boy, Damascus Gear Operation Osaka, and Metal Slug 3. (I never heard of Revenant Dogma before, but it looks like my sort of game, so I’ll be looking into it.)
Papers, Please is getting a physical release, as is Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. That last one is actually available now. They followed it with Hover and Transistor.
Next came another rapid-fire lineup, this time for the Switch, showing Rogue Legacy, Bad North, Dark Devotion, and Blazing Chrome.
They showed longer trailers for the next few games getting physical releases, Freedom Planet, Turok + Turok 2, Blaster Master Zero, and Red Faction.
In a surprise announcement, Limited Run Games is now supporting the 3DS. They announced the Atooi Collection, which contains Mutant Mudds, Bomb Monkey, Xeodrifter, Mutant Mudds Super Challenge, and Chicken Wiggle.
Moving away from the 3DS to FMV games, Corpse Killer and Double Switch are getting 25th Anniversary Edition remasters. They also announced realMyst for the Switch and a release date for Mercenary Kings: Reloaded Edition.
The biggest surprise might have been that LRG will have the exclusive Shenmue III Collector’s Edition (with limited copies, so you’d better be quick when the time comes).
Finally, they announced a collaboration to release Collector’s Editions of numerous Star Wars games, starting with Star Wars: Bounty Hunter for the PS4 and Star Wars for the NES/Game Boy (although it’s not clear yet if that’s coming to the PS4 or its original platforms or what).
Anyway, the JoJo reference alone made it worth tuning in to see what Limited Run Games had to say.
Did you enjoy the PC Gaming Show and LRG’s E3 2019 press conference? Tune in soon so we can discuss Ubisoft’s press conference, which is coming up next!
So Bethesda’s press conferences are in an odd spot for me, because I’ve played almost zero Bethesda games. At the same time, however, sometimes they have some cool announcements.
They talked about Elder Scrolls Blades and how it’s coming to the Switch, went into great detail about new content coming to Fallout 76, including actual NPCs (which got a lot of cheers) and a battle royale mode.
Next came the first new game announcement, and one I’m actually pretty interested in. Shinji Mikami’s company Tango Gameworks has a new game coming out called GhostWire: Tokyo. It’s action adventure instead of survival horror (or action horror pretending to be survival horror), but it has a supernatural plot and really caught my attention.
After that, they went back to their already-released games briefly to introduced the next expansion for Elder Scrolls Online. Then they announced a new Commander Keen game… which is unfortunately a free-to-play mobile game, although it did look cute.
They discussed new content for Elder Scrolls Legends, a new expansion coming to Rage 2, a VR Wolfenstein game and more about Wolfenstein Youngblood, and then it was time for another new game announcement.
Deathloop is another game involving time loops, or maybe just death loops? It’s about two assassins trying to kill each other to end the cycle they’re stuck in. The gameplay alone wouldn’t have won me over, but the premise is interesting enough to catch my attention.
Then, after talking about their cloud streaming technology Orion for a while, they moved on to Doom Eternal.
Some parts of Doom Eternal sound cool, but I’m just not sure it’s my sort of game. They showed a couple new trailers, announced a November 22 release date, and revealed the multiplayer mode “Battlemode.”
Bethesda’s press conference ended just in time for Devolver’s to begin.
Devolver Digital’s Big Fancy Press Conference 2019
Two years ago, I did not know what to expect from Devolver Digital’s “press conference.” Now I do, so I went in expecting and hoping for pure insanity, and I got it.
This year, they held a “Devolver Direct,” parodying Nintendo’s presentation style. Amid all the insanity, they actually announced a few games. First up was a multiplayer game called Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, which I’m not interested in.
Then they parodied the numerous digital game stores and launchers, as well as bootleg games, by announcing “Devolver Bootleg.” I came very close to repeating last year’s mistake in which I blogged about Bethesda’s “Skyrim Very Special Edition” joke before learning the next day that it was an actual game. This time, I checked. And yes, Devolver Bootleg actually exists.
Next up was a “reverse horror game” called Carrion, followed by an arcade cabinet announcement that is alsonot a joke, a new expansion for The Messenger, and a new trailer for My Friend Pedro.
And then this year’s story concluded.
Sure, they didn’t show a lot of games, but it was a wild ride. Of all the press conferences so far, Devolver’s is certainly the one that made me smile the most.
What did you think of Bethesda’s press conference? What about the Devolver Digital’s increasing spiral into insanity? Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to discuss the next four E3 press conferences!
