Julius

Is this Civ VII..? EDIT: wow okay guess not, just veeeeeeeery Civ-like

Nah it's fine, they'll stick a 2 on it, that's all it takes right? But more seriously, hearing Overwatch fans be so confused by its sequel so far says it all. I suppose if you abstract the word "Blizzard" it's pretty much the colder version of "rough waters"

Generic triumphant and jubilant trumpets. I love how generic music makes us go "yup, 'Murica" in our minds More Flight Simulator stuff though, looks great as ever!

Forza - awesome. But am I the only one whose stream is making it look real rough? I'm at 1080/60 and can count the pixels obviously down to the stream, but it makes it so weird for a first look.

We batter him with love and understanding! SHORTS RULE

As soon as it started looking like Nintendo weren't turning up this year I definitely started thinking it made the most sense And right? I had to rewind because I thought I'd missed the release date!

"Today we're doing something we've never done before" Not telling us how many games you're showing off? EDIT: welp

It's a tropical 17°C down here, it's shorts weather! Don't know what it's like up north, but what is this madness?!

Oh yeah, definitely. I actually had to double check when DLC was first announced for Bloodborne and Dark Souls III (it was September and August in their respective years of release) just to reel in my hopes for Elden Ring DLC here, seeing how close they've been to From and Bandai Namco on the (proper) reveals for so their games (Dark Souls III, Sekiro, and Elden Ring if I'm not mistaken?). It could be Gamescom or TGS I guess, but who am I kidding, it'd be smart logistically to save that for The Game Awards when they walk away with GOTY at the end of the year Yeah, for me exclusive JRPG's and just showing any sort of consistency in getting first party projects out of the door (because PlayStation would still probably be my console of preference for third party stuff) would be enough for me to get onboard, because while I've got so much of their back catalogue to catch up on anyways, I just want to know it's going to be strong going forwards. Starfield is the most appealing game to me on their slate, but that's based purely on hopes than any solid evidence of a great game, so hopefully it shows well! Wonder if Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade coming to Xbox is announced here or gets saved for the 25th anniversary stream on Thursday? It's been over a year since it released on PS5, so I'm half expecting it to turn up somewhere. Still waiting on mine, but that's exactly the reason I'm getting one: to stay away from my PC but to get to some of those games so many indie games and JRPG's stuck on Steam wishlisted!

Phil Spencer saying we should expect less CGI and more gameplay ahead of the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase. Man, I hope so. Let's see some HUD's, let's see some dates (windows! You guys are Microsoft, come on!), let's see them really try to sell some more people on Series consoles like myself who are still waiting on Xbox first party consistency before they consider taking the plunge. Fingers crossed Starfield gets a good showing (think having it here and without a solid showing would just continue to bury the confidence in Bethesda we've seen waning the last few years), not really sure what else I want/expect from first party beyond Forza. Hellblade II? Third party could be where it's at for me, mostly in terms of stuff we might see come to Switch and PlayStation. I'm not even going to put out the usual trio of games I normally want at these events because I've been jinxing them, but hey, they could turn up here. Tangential to one of them: Somerville? Anyways, here's hoping for a good if not great show for them. With so many going AWOL this year at Not-E3, I feel like Xbox have a massive opportunity here to really come out swinging. Just, for the love of all that is holy, I swear I'm going to flip a table if you say how many world premieres and games you're showing off at the start of your show. Don't do it Phil, I'm watching you.

Yeah, that E3 2016 Sony showing was something really special. The orchestra live scoring Cory playing the live GoW demo, gah, it was something else! And then on 2017 and the blank faces of people reacting to Bluepoint's Shadow of the Colossus Especially with EZA. The RE VII trailer ending with Jones screaming "demo TONIGHT AHHHHHHHHHH!" was so perfect. Miss those old live E3 conferences with an audience, miss Sony live shows especially - if we're talking specifically live presence at E3, especially with E3 teetering close to death, I think their final showing at 2018 could end up being the last best E3 conference for me (even with all the weird shuffling around that year!) - because they just brought it in a way only Nintendo comparably good, and man, I miss old garage vibes EZA. It wasn't fair on Jones at all at the time really, but their move to the studio was followed by COVID, then Kyle leaving, then Jones leaving, and E3 just being much less magical; it's just been a perfect storm of things going against them, unfortunately. They all seem a little jaded coming off COVID (which I totally get), and they've all been going through a lot (Huber especially), so it's all just...different. Things change, but even more than last year, this year I find that I couldn't really care less about E3 (or Not-E3). I legitimately took a one hour break from SGF because I was so bored and tuned into the end to see the last few games and the Druckmann salt, but it's kind of had a ripple effect where my hype has been drained for everything else; I watched Day of the Devs - which was great! But not for the reasons I love E3: the hype and magic - but haven't bothered even catching up on Devolver, and it's why I'm not really bothering to talk about the events at length like I'd normally want to. I'll probably tune in for Xbox just to see what happens, and obviously the FF VII anniversary stuff, but it's looking more and more like Nintendo is AWOL this year (yeah they can do something else in the summer, but they've been the best show at E3 no question ever since PlayStation left), and we don't even have a Square Enix conference where I can beg for ports. Think this is the year where it's clicked for me more than it has before, as I know it has for others here in recent years, that this just isn't going to be the same anymore I normally return to old conferences pre-E3 but hadn't really been feeling it this year, so reading your love for some of them, think I might have to join you in going back and reminiscing for that E3 pick-me-up

Official guides are on the way courtesy of Future Press...and split between two books, which are £40 each: Seem more like coffee table/collection books than actual guides in this day and age, but they do look cool I guess?

Schreier is saying November, and that the date will be revealed at the end of the month. No delay to 2023 according to him, and seems like September was originally the plan. Guess I'm going to be coming in hot off catching up on the other games and replaying 2018, then weird to wait until the end of this month, makes me wonder if they have a dedicated State of Play planned?

All the sighs: delayed to 2023 A few words on the delay from producer Yuito Kimura: So...guess I'll bump this thread again for a fourth consecutive December at the end of the year

Yes! This and some confirmation on Ever Crisis coming to console once it's all said and done a few years from now please

Another event to add to the agenda: Final Fantasy VII is getting a 25th anniversary stream on Thursday! Time to temper those expectations and not hope for Remake Part II news...right?

Day of the Devs has completely bodied Geoff and Summer Game Fest this year. I want to play pretty much all of these! Do feel sorry for Neil and the team about the TLOU leak, that salt was unreal looking forward to Factions at least, sounds like the project has ballooned but in a way they're ready to tackle, which has got to be exciting!

Makes sense that it wouldn't be at Summer Game Fest now we know to expect TLOU to be there instead, but it does make me wonder where it's going to turn up next and get its release date announced (regardless of if it's arriving this year or next). Would a September Showcase be too late to announce a release date arriving prior to mid-November's TGA cut-off I wonder? I'd want to say yes, but that's the only place it's turned up before, so guess it could also turn up during the summer, but that would be super weird after not having it in a super solid State of Play or at SGF this month.

Oh lord we leaking! SGF Live seems all but confirmed...

Yeah, honestly while watching Kenobi I've quickly got to the point of questioning now - two episodes away from being three different live-action series in - if the quality of Mando is an exception, rather than a sign of what we should expect? Every show is going to have its flaws, and while Mando has some moments I could probably point to such as a few moments of being poorly paced, having some janky writing, or things I hate about Tatooine's sand, but honestly it's so few and far between with that show that I don't care to really bring it up when looking at the series from a broader perspective. I feel like Kenobi and Boba, personally, have kind of been the inverse of this: I'm nitpicking to find things I love about it more so than I am to find flaws. I think there are many reasons for it too, but I don't think it's at all a coincidence that the one Dave Filoni was most involved in is almost universally the one which has been the best received. If you look at Bad Batch and The Clone Wars S7 too, I'd say those also turned out just as consistent as Mando has. I guess as well there's the fact that Filoni was working on Mando stuff and Favreau was too, and they kind of came together, and so we now have two sides which exchange ideas and talk things out. It's not production by committee, its storytelling by, well, telling a story. I think both Kenobi and Boba could have been great, I just think they've been handled incredibly poorly. It's not even like the sequels where we can point at production issues and churning out a huge blockbuster in two years when they could have done with three (let alone everything else!), these have seemingly had the time put in, but who the hell is looking over and signing off on these scripts and how these episodes turn out? I'm all for bringing more faces in to tell new Star Wars stories, but I think there have definitely been some growing pains outside of Mando, and it feels like they need someone - not the Story Group like it was before, an actual bonafide storyteller - to look over these shows a bit more attentively. Ahsoka is going to be a huge test for Dave but, assuming all goes well - and I think it will, as while there'll be some Mando stuff to tie in I'm sure, I'm positive he's otherwise had Rebels sequel plans written out for a good while now - I really hope we see him take on more and more responsibility as time goes on. We've said it before, but he just gets it in a way I don't think any other individual storyteller currently working at Lucasfilm does. We'll see how Andor turns out, but I agree and think it'll be a surprise bit (and I only say surprise because I've seen some a bit on the fence about a Rogue One prequel), and being shot on location and having the right staff - oh what's this? Movie people working on TV to make it look and feel like a movie? Who would've thought that'd be a great idea? - I'm pretty confident that it'll at least nail the scale of everything. The Acolyte I'm a little nervous about just given the period it's in, it's very bold to have the first big High Republic project that's not a published product be set at the end of that era and potentially have some foreshadowing or ties into the Saga (going off the title and the little we know about the premise at least). I want new stuff too, for sure, especially long form stuff, and I think it's a shame Rian's trilogy keeps getting pushed back, even if it's because of him having great success elsewhere. I'd love to see him have a trilogy of films set far away from the Skywalker Saga where he can do his thing without as much limiting his creativity or resulting in backlash because of how he treats certain characters. TLJ for me is the Star Wars film for me which is the most up and down (because I think the prequels are pretty consistent in terms of quality in each film), but I loved some of his ideas and some of what he was going for.

Xbox are also stating that they're on track to launch 5+ games in their next fiscal year (1st July 2022 - 30th June 2023): I certainly hope so, as it's been a bit frustrating - even as someone who doesn't own an Xbox currently - to just watch their first party studios promise tens of new and wonderful things only to spin their wheels on getting games regularly out of the door. Fingers crossed these next 12 months go smoothly and are a sign of what's to come

I mean, the thing with any story is that people always come into it looking for different things, and that's only strengthened in a multigeneration story like Star Wars. I don't totally disagree with what they're saying and can absolutely see where they're coming from. There are two ways to take "I don't care about Reva" - it's either being flippant and reacting to not getting what they wanted (a show focused on Obi-Wan and Vader), or not actually caring about the character herself. Or both. And to be honest, while I'm happy to have newly introduced characters - which is absolutely necessary, as while I love Mando, a lot of its cameos make the galaxy feel that bit smaller - I don't think they've done a stellar job with Reva so far in the show, period, so I can empathise with someone who didn't care about the character. That's not a knock against Moses Ingram's performance, or saying the character is pointless, but she didn't really feel like a character to me at all until Part IV, simply because her purpose prior to that was almost solely to move the plot along. She didn't really get a chance to be fleshed out in earlier episodes I feel, so her finally getting an opportunity to bounce off another character for longer than 30 seconds and who challenged her finally started to feel like getting a character more than a plot carrier. Further yet... As for being "here to see Obi-Wan and Vader", I mean, that's on the marketing, not the viewer, as even if it doesn't make any sense to think that they'll be in every scene together, not everyone's as into Star Wars as we are or tries to think about structuring, writing, and developing a story. Conscious decisions were made to show certain pieces of concept art, set photos, and the first recognisable statement of music in the teaser trailer was Battle of the Heroes. To me, at least, how they presented and marketed the show felt like it was heavily leaning on this idea that it was pretty much a sequel series to Episode III more than anything else. They've also had Hayden feature just as heavily as Ewan in the show's press run, which as a fan is absolutely awesome and I love seeing him get the love he's been getting from fans, but hasn't exactly been representative of his presence in the show to this point. So yeah, I can see where they're coming from, even if I can agree with you that I'm all for new Star Wars characters, I imagine for many it probably comes more from a place of frustration of their expectations for the series (in fairness, based on its marketing) than any attempt at understanding why Reva is around, why we haven't had more of Obi-Wan and Vader, etc.

Game Pass is coming to Samsung's 2022 smart TVs at the end of this month and Project Moorcroft (aka the trials thing we heard about before) will be rolling out within the next year. Sounds more like an E3 demo styled thing coming into the home than simply being a game trial, which is how it seed to be phrased before. Feel like a lot of us have been saying bringing E3-styled demos to people's home would be the smart move for a while, so that's cool to see, especially providing financial incentives for independent devs to jump onboard. I remember wanting them to do it once xCloud became a thing to help stream next-gen demo experiences Also! Xbox Design Lab is getting more colours and coming to more countries: