Julius

This upgrade came out today to very, very little fanfare. Truly bizarre to see it on store shelves and people buying it before it was officially announced to be dropping today!

All the stuff from the official site: Also what feels like another Berserk reference... Dude on the left giving me major Griffith vibes with that helmet, pretty sure we also saw someone in a similar helmet against the reindeer boss. Yeah, I'm really curious to see how co-op pans out in this game. The way it looked in the trailer, and what they say on the official website, specifically in the section about exploration of the open world... ...makes me think that the main (and easiest) part of online play that you can access will be in the open world, which I think makes a lot of sense given that the glimpses of the world show that there will be a variety of enemies most likely at drastically different levels of difficulty as we see in most open worlds. In the settlements/kingdoms/and so on coming off the open world is where I think it'll probably be gated behind beating a boss or calling for help for one, as I believe is the case in the other From games (they do mention that you can "call upon allies for aid" too). Does feel less like an "open world" and more like an "open field", which I think I prefer (as I feel it would be more focused). Major Ocarina of Time Hyrule Field and Shadow of the Colossus vibes in that open area! I know the rest of Summer Game Fest was a bit wonky at times, but still, kudos to Geoff for landing this, you could really tell how enthused he was about it when introducing the game. Strong start to E3 with this, glad this is where the show ended, and if we get some more stuff from other games I'm really excited about that could be next year (Final Fantasy XVI, the Breath of the Wild sequel, Starfield) then I will be extremely happy, but the fact that this trailer specifically is pushing me over the edge towards playing my next From game says it all. The choir at the end when he jumps gets me every time!

(but yeah you're right, hopefully one day though!)

My copy has arrived too Installing now, not sure quite how much I'll end up playing it today, but I'm very much looking forward to checking it out! Out of curiosity, for those picking it up, which mode are you planning on playing the game in? I'm leaning away from Performance RT myself and more towards swapping between Fidelity and Performance, got to see those reflections and that smoothness!

I thought the show started pretty strongly: Metal Slug Tactics looked great with its pixel art and trailer animation, the Sable footage with Japanese Breakfast singing over it looked great, seeing a couple of indies from PlayStation was good in Chicory and Salt and Sacrifice, and Solar Ash (though I think it showed pretty poorly). But I have to talk about the trailer for Death Stranding's Metal Gear Expansion Director's Cut. Kojima you mad man with the trolling - had me on the edge of my seat the entire time! The layout, the air vent, the cardboard box, the oranges - so much MGS stuff for it to just be a Director's Cut reveal, I was laughing my ass off. I haven't played Death Stranding so wasn't sure at first if it was a scene from the game, but it very quickly became apparent that it wasn't. I know there have been rumours (more wishes so far in my opinion) about Bluepoint remaking Metal Gear Solid, but maybe @Hero-of-Time or @drahkon can clear this up for me: is that box that says 'FRAGILE' on it in the game? Because to let my mind run crazy with speculation for a second: the box is by far the main focus of the trailer, and is the last thing we see, and it says 'HANDLED WITH LOVE - FRAGILE - EXPRESS' and shows two skeleton hands seemingly passing the fragile thing over / holding it up. Is this trailer Kojima reaffirming that he is done with Metal Gear but happy to pass off Metal Gear - the 'FRAGILE' thing - to a team ready to handle it with 'LOVE'? Maybe I'm crazy, but that's how I'm going to read that trailer. And hell, take my crazy speculation out of it, and I still think it was a really fun trailer and look forward to checking out the Director's Cut when I do get around to playing the game, really think Kojima could do a lot of interesting things with the adaptive triggers! I feel like the show kind of dropped off for a good 10 games or so, and feel like it seems to be a running theme with Geoff's shows: fairly strong start out of the gate before tailing off rather quickly in the middle. However, the triple hitter of Tales of Arise (which still looks gorgeous), Sky: Children of the Light (which also looks fantastic and now finally has a release date!) and Planet of Lana (unfortunately for me an Xbox console exclusive) quickly raised my hopes in the middle of the show...before it all came crashing down again and fizzled out until the epic trailer for Elden Ring. That's the point where it felt like this was an opener for E3. There was just so much waffling on, a lot of MMO's which never show off particularly well at these sorts of things, and a lot of cross-brand stuff going on too (Smite x Stranger Things, Fall Guys x NieR - which was funny - and Rocket League x F&F), with what felt like blink-and-you'll-miss-it teases of other shows and a lot of meaningless updates for games we already knew about. Better luck next time Geoff. My Totally Official Score: 6.5/10 (and that's with a +0.5 for both the Death Stranding and Elden Ring trailers) I did start watching the Day of the Devs stream after it went straight into it after Kickoff ended, thought it was a really smart move to go into that hot off the heels of Elden Ring and with Axiom Verge 2 have a pretty big announcement locked and loaded and ready to go. Unfortunately I ended up caving and started rewatching the Elden Ring trailer instead, but @Ganepark32 and @Map have sold me on it, so I'll probably give it a watch tomorrow morning!

I'll get to it...at some point after finishing Demon's Souls at the end of last year I went and bought every modern From Software game except for Sekiro, so thankfully I'm forced to make a decision where I don't play it next just by not having it on my shelf! Also kind of want to see how systems evolved as the series went on, especially because I started with Demon's Souls (even if it was the Bluepoint remake). I was originally planning on trying to get through the other Souls games before this released (assuming the appetite for them stayed), kind of assuming it was March 2022 or later, but think it might be a bit of a squeeze to get them all in before January; I won't rush, guess we'll see what happens. I've definitely been feeling the craving to play one coming on the last month or two though, so I imagine I'll be digging into Dark Souls sooner rather than later. Also just been rewatching the trailer and the stone golem thing with a bell is giving me major Shadow of the Colossus vibes - it's pretty much exactly what I wanted, assuming we can fight it (and if so kind of wanted the Divine Beasts to be in Breath of the Wild). Cannot wait to see more! If it's in-engine showing footage of the game being played, just from camera angles you probably won't get in the game for the sake of being a trailer, then I'd consider it a gameplay trailer? Just not technically raw gameplay footage with a HUD and so on?

Awesome, but assuming this gets a PS5 case, I'm absolutely just going to go based on which case looks better love that deep teal colour, and the way the top of the symbol kind of forms an eclipse! Also, I know Berserk has obviously influenced Miyazaki a lot, but there are several things about this that are just straight up giving off that Berserk influence: the framing of the case and that eclipse, that wolf dude and the Berserker armour, the tree...hell yeah. This damn trailer puts me in a weird spot. I'm really looking forward to checking out Rift Apart tomorrow, but now I really want to play Dark Souls!

Yeah, fantastic trailer for Elden Ring! Also we basically get to ride Yakul from Princess Mononoke and that pumps my hype even further

January 21st 2022!!!

Oh goody I wonder what this final game will be Fast & Furious 2?!

My immediate reaction was "Wait, is that supposed to be 2B?" So even if you had played the game, it was still fairly ambiguous!

You mean you don't see it?! I kid, looks nothing like her, more like a blob trying to cosplay it's 2B from NieR: Automata

HAHAHAHAHA Crying at 2B in Fall Guys

I'm really liking what we've seen of the game so far, hopefully the weeks around it stay pretty empty so I can dive straight in!

"So, you're going to be born, huh?" That line from the MHS2 trailer feels simultaneously deep and ridiculous Terrible release date too, we get Skyward Sword HD the next week don't we? Feel like that game was going to have a tough time as it was, but yikes. Also, pretty sure they're hiding the gameplay so people go in thinking it's not what it is (turn-based)

That guy said "Wings of Ruin?" in the same cadence as "Metal Gear?" and I'm laughing my ass off right now

Sky: Children of the Light coming to Switch June 29th!

...aaaaaaand I regret my words and deeds (at least for the last 5 minutes or so? Tales of Arise still looks great. Finally getting a release date for the console version of Sky: Children of the Light! Even if we already knew it was coming in June And Planet of Lana looks gorgeous with that art style.

I thought it was going okay until about 15 minutes ago, pacing dropped off a cliff with all of the MMO and brand crossover talk. Right now I can feel every second passing. Sounds like it'll be worth it by the end, though

Am I the only one that thinks Solar Ash seems to be having a tough time showing itself off? It looks nice, but today it was just pressing R1 a bunch, and I don't remember it looking particularly great last time it was shown either

Probably closing the show, right? Geoff said the "endgame" was something we'd want to stick around for, so I wonder. Also, love the fact that during the show where we might get an Elden Ring trailer, someone is keeping an eye on the playlist

Having not played the game I was thinking it was just a normal scene from the game, but then the room layout looked super suspicious. And then the top-down. And the box. And the oranges. Damn it Kojima!

Kojima saying "one more thing" gave me a heart attack. I haven't played Death Stranding but holy f*** this feels like a Metal Gear tease all over. Just a PS5 upgrade right? Right?! Oh wow a Director's Cut, okay

The pixel art and animation in that trailer was great! Feels at the very least like it's destined for Switch (though hopefully it eventually comes to everything). Also, love how Keighley can't go many events without Kojima

Phil took out the finger guns today and took aim at PlayStation: Pretty sure we all know why they do that Phil I'm very much looking forward to seeing what Xbox's plans are with this, xCloud in particular. I wonder if we might see something announced to do with this during E3? One first party game every quarter (I would assume at a minimum) is bold, but it needs to be done at this point, especially after a pretty quiet start to life with the Series consoles; that's not a knock at all, I know it has an excellent back catalogue, but the shiny and new first party games just haven't been there yet. Still very curious to see how well those actually turn out and are managed by them in the long run, but I want to come away from the Xbox/Bethesda conference on Sunday keeping an eye out for a Series X, and consider getting one over a Switch Pro. The software is absolutely the missing piece right now, so if they can consistently get out quality games, then I imagine a lot of us will be there.