Julius

The erhu at the end was playing the start of Zelda's Lullaby. I've watched the trailer a lot, that took a while to pick up! I kind of want to play more Zelda games now just because I hate to miss out on musical nods like that (oh and I hear they're pretty good most of the time too )

Nice VaatiVidya video which wraps up the info not just from Miyazaki's IGN interview, but his Famitsu and Igromania (a Russian site) interviews too:

We saw it on Friday, and today was just further confirmation: this Italy side is the real deal. Extremely strong at the back, fluid in the middle, and lethal when they need to be up front, and more importantly for a tournament, really good so far at game management. Switzerland always seem to roll over against the bigger sides at tournaments, felt that a bit here. Italy vs Wales should be a good one! Yeah, the not-so-new rule. It's nice that it's at least applied consistently, but as someone who used to play as a defender through school and after, I think it's really stupid when it's clearly unintentional, for example with Chiellini I don't understand where else he's supposed to put his hands in that situation. Do the rules not account for needing to balance your weight with your arms? But oh well, rules are rules It's hilarious because he's only 23 years old and I think he's much older as I don't watch him play on a regular basis, but saw him through to his 30's a few years ago in FIFA

Locatelli was always great in my old Milan Career Mode in FIFA. Glad to see him finally living up to the hype

Hell of a ball by Locatelli to the right wing, damn. Absolutely deserved to finish that move off, Italy look lethal. Also that Chiellini goal being disallowed...yeah, don't agree with that one. At all. Maybe players should start tying their hands behind their back?

Appointments opening up for 21+ year olds today, so booked the earliest I could find: my first appointment is in just under 3 weeks' time, and then my second appointment is towards the end of September. Finally!

Bloomberg are reporting that PSVR2 is aiming for a Holiday 2022 release. But my wallet

Five favourite games of this E3 (yes I'm counting Summer Game Fest in this, don't @ me!) for me would have to be, in no particular order: • Elden Ring - fantastic trailer and the thing I'm most hyped for from this E3, looks incredible and it comes out in January! • Starfield - thought what was shown of it in the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase was pretty underwhelming, but the behind-the-scenes video with the concept art and Inon Zur's music more pronounced than in that trailer, as well as Todd Howard's interview with The Telegraph, got me really excited. Will wait until next E3/summer, when I assume we will get a deeper dive, but assuming no delays, I think I'll be picking up a Series X a few weeks ahead of this next year. • The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - sucks that it's probably coming the second half of next year rather than the first, but I thought the trailer was fantastic for getting your mind racing, the new mechanics and items they showed off were super cool, and I really enjoyed the music. Still one of my most anticipated! • Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising - I backed Eiyuden Chronicle on Kickstarter last year, ahead of playing the first two Suikoden games this year, just because I had a hunch I would get on well with those games and because it felt like it was worth supporting something like this. Having now played the first two Suikoden games, both of which I loved dearly, I cannot wait to see what Murayama and Rabbit & Bear have in store for us with the game! And it still looks fantastic. So, why the hype for Rising? Because it's the first we've seen of it, and I can't wait to hopefully get a bit of a peek behind the curtain into this world next year! • Replaced - love pixel art, love the backgrounds, it was a pretty high octane trailer and I can't wait to see more. Somerville looks great too, I personally don't have any real investment in Metroid Dread but was hyped just because I know so many here were hoping for it and will absolutely be picking it up, and Advance Wars 1+2 is something I'm definitely interested in. A bunch of indies I like the look of, perhaps too many to mention! Oh, other than Trip to Yomi, that's probably level with Replaced for me! Some other topics for discussion I'd like to throw in the mix: • Favourite Trailer - Elden Ring. Release date earlier than I think anyone was really expecting, yes it used the same music as before but I don't care, the crescendo of the choir at the end as The Tarnished leaps towards 16-armed dude gives me goosebumps every single time. It also really gets the mind racing with possibilities, actively is pushing me towards playing my next From Software game, and I'm very excited for it, or course! I've watched this trailer back a lot, as you might be able to tell! • Worst Trailer - Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Absolutely horrendous trailer which did absolutely nothing to inform you of what the game itself will be like, instead focusing on being edgy to the point of cringe. CHAOS. Urgh. And it sucks even more because the shadow dropped demo was corrupted and the update didn't take place until a day later, but when it did, the gameplay was actually good! • Best Presentation - Nintendo. It's unfunny just how easily they walked away with E3 off the back of three of their relatively smaller IP (Metroid, Advance Wars and Warioware) and a trailer for the Breath of the Wild sequel. There were a couple of things I took issue with from a presentation perspective, but overall it was incredibly well paced for its length and there were some really smartly curated moments too, but I'll get to that in the Direct thread as I'm still catching up on some of Treehouse! • Most Disappointing Presentation - Square Enix. Look, Gearbox was objectively the worst E3 conference I've ever seen, but I had no expectations going into that, and nothing riding on it. Capcom was underwhelming, sure, but it was pretty inoffensive. Square Enix crushed dreams during their presentation. Final Fantasy I - VI Collection I've been begging for for years? Steam and Mobile only. Final Fantasy Soulslike rumour? A trailer that does nothing at all to interest you in the game, promotes everything Final Fantasy has done wrong after doing so much right the last few years, it's rough. Babylon's Fall? Looked rough. Final Fantasy XVI? Complete no-show, guess we're waiting for a State of Play for that. • Greatest Presentation Moment - Geoff Keighley's over-the-top introduction for the Elden Ring trailer and then declaring he was free afterwards. Did so incredibly well to keep it under wraps, and though Summer Game Fest was far from being the best show this last week, I'm grateful that he holds it. • Most Awkward Presentation Moment - Randy Pitchford interviewing the cast of the Borderlands film, it's been a while since I've felt this awkward watching something on a stream. Runner-up would be Deviation Studios being announced at the tail end of Summer Game Fest -- not because of the guys themselves, thought they were a little nervous, but because it just felt so out of keeping with having a somewhat neutral space and didn't need to be there. • A Presentation Moment That Hit a Pet Peeve - "We have an amazing show: 30 titles, 27 on Game Pass" - Sarah Bond during Xbox & Bethesda Showcase. They need to stop doing this, shut up and let your games sell themselves, damn it! Runner-up would be every "Exclusive" mentioned, legitimately think they added a good 10 - 15 minutes to their show with that and "Day 1 on Game Pass". Urgh! • Most Disappointing Moment - Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. I refuse to talk about this further. • Biggest No-shows - Final Fantasy XVI not being at Square Enix hurt. Was really hoping for something on Playdead's or Fumito Ueda-helmed genDESIGN's next games too. • Overall E3 score - 5.5/10. As has already been said before, most of these publishers and studios didn't need their own events based on what they brought with them, and I think the lack of things to fill in the gaps (impressions from the show floor, interviews, demos) just made it a thing I tuned in for when it came to particular presentations, rather than normally having something on in the background, as was the case during previous E3's. Nintendo boosted it by an entire point for me, this wasn't a good E3 on the whole, but they at least managed to drag it out of the grave.

"We did our research into what you thought it would be, and went with the only thing we came across. Welcome to The Legend of Zelda: Wii Sports Resort Skydiving+"

The Legend of Zelda Game & Watch is up on the Nintendo UK Store for £44.99 (link). (Had no idea where to put this so here I guess )

The Special Edition is up on the Nintendo UK Store for £79.99 for those interested! Link

Ah yes, the aptly named The Legend of Zelda: Zelda Dies, Link Gets an Infection, And Yes, There is Time Travel, MUHAHAHAHAHA Jokes aside though, anyone got any more title predictions based on the trailer? I liked Whisper of Malice before, but there's no way that they're not incorporating the sky into this somehow after that trailer (plus, other than the start, it seemed much more hopeful and bright than that first trailer!). If there is a time travel element as @Kav and @Mokong have been speculating about, especially if it has something to do with what's going on in the sky, I wonder if it could be something like Pastward Skies? Jury's still out for me on just how they will want to name it in terms of potentially incorporating "Breath of the Wild", I think just in terms of marketing it'd make things much easier for them to (and based on what Bill's saying there's no way it'll just be something like Skies of the Wild, right?). Something like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 - Pastward Skies doesn't seem too long (though I'm imagining it's footprint on the front of a box and it is pretty long!), though anything longer than two words for that second subtitle probably would be and so they for sure wouldn't incorporate "Breath of the Wild" if so.

Damiani from Easy Allies said to do exactly this when they first saw the trailer. It's beautiful

France deserved the win, better team on the night and unfortunately the ball just didn't fall the way Germany needed it to in the final third. Both teams were very nervy and complacent in possession, especially in the first half, think Hungary and Portugal can take away from this game that there might be some points they could sneak away with in their next games

Mbappé and involvement in offside goals, name a better duo

If anyone interested in seeing more of Dread turned off the Treehouse stream for whatever reason, they're back on with the second part!

Excellent goal by Mbappé, beautifully stroked in. So it's a bit if a shame he was a good foot or so offside

Rabiot looked completely caught in two minds with that shot against the post. Pretty sure it was his momentum from motioning to pass that ended up making it not hit the back of the net, fooled Neuer though! Unlucky for Gnabry

Excellent pass by Pogba, no-one on the pitch had any clue what was going on except for Hernandez, and everyone knew where that ball was going to end up (even if an own goal). Pogba always shows up for France, shame for United fans he doesn't seem to do the same for them, but I guess they don't let him off the collar as much (guess they haven't got someone like Kanté), but it's crazy seeing him press so high up the pitch in this game. Passing has been all over the place from both teams though, really scrappy which is surprising, as great as it is for us neutrals

French and German lads clearly in a rush to get back to their hotels. Incredibly fast start by both sides!

DEMO IMPRESSIONS Got a bit caught up after starting to type this earlier with some other stuff and then the Nintendo Direct. As I mentioned before, I wanted to put together some more cohesive thoughts on the demo, in part to figure out my own thoughts on this game so far, but also because I know not everyone owns a PS5 right now and so there are some missing out on this demo I wanted to go into a bit more detail before (I know there will be online playthroughs and other impressions too, but figured I might as well share my own, as I actually took a lot of notes!). Depending on your pace and how much you explore, as well as how you handle Garland, you're probably looking at somewhere between 1 and 2 hours for this demo. Heads-up: I'll mention PlayStation button and trigger names throughout, it's purely because that's the only thing the demo is on right now, I'm aware it landing elsewhere too! As with most demos and many games, it starts out with you sorting out your settings, the most interesting of which were English and Japanese voice-acting options and the fact this demo has both Performance and Resolution modes; I personally went with the Performance Mode, which should have favoured frame rate over resolution, but I honestly couldn't tell if that was the case at times, as there were a number of times in the demo (a lot of them on one certain bridge during a battle) where the frame rate absolutely tanked. I know it's an early build, and I'm grateful we got to try it out, but yikes was it rough at times! There are also three different difficulty options available from the start: Easy, Normal, and Hard (I went with Normal for my first time through). Took a little while to load in (clearly not optimised very well just yet) and they had some tips in the loading screens, and I liked that you had the option to proceed rather than just automatically proceeding once the game has finished loading, as I know a lot of games do. You then load into a golden field for some tutorials, and it looks rough. Trying to pause the game brings up a menu but, as expected for a game like this, doesn't actually pause the gameplay, and you can still move around while in the main menu (there was seemingly no benefit to this in the demo). It was at this point that I noticed that there was an option in the menu for Job Trees, which got me excited, but it was greyed out for the time being. The tutorials introduce you to a number of key mechanics in the game, namely Soul Burst, Soul Shield, and Lightbringer. Soul Burst is like a special (almost like a riposte, kind of? Except the prompt sticks around for it for a good while longer, as they'll be down for a moment or two) and has its own animation, which we saw in the trailer for the game, where you crystallise your opponent, and you achieve this by selecting Circle on an enemy whose stance you have broken (similar to what I've seen in Sekiro with the Posture gauges, and yes, you have one too). Soul Shield is essentially a way to parry enemy attacks by tapping Circle while in battle, which helps fill up your MP bar, and can be used on both physical attacks as well as magic; for example, you will come across enemies in the demo where they shoot fireballs at you, and using Soul Shield will increase your MP but also allow you to fire these fireballs back their way by pressing Square (and you can do similar for stones thrown at you, but that's nowhere near as interesting!). Lastly, Lightbringer is an ability which will increases your break damage output when you have 1 or more filled MP gauges, and is accessed through L2 + Circle. R1 is your light attack, and R2 is your heavy attack. There are a bunch of tutorial messages scattered throughout the demo as you gain access to more abilities, and while it did feel like a bit much for the demo, over the course of a decently sized game I think it will be fine. Oh, and as you can see above, blood spatters across your character and their weapon. Really trying to justify that 18 PEGI rating! This brings us onto battles and the general gameplay loop as you make your way through the Temple of Chaos - how is it? I have limited experience with Soulsborne and Souls-like games, and I can't speak to just how similar it is to Nioh having not played those games myself, but it looks like a faster-paced version of that from what I've seen played of it before. It feels much tighter than something like Jedi: Fallen Order in terms of how it feels, but is generally quite forgiving by comparison to Demon's Souls, attacks feel impactful and hefty, but you won't often find yourself locked into an animation and can quickly dodge out of the way, with generous windows for you to use Soul Shield in. Magic attacks are quite overpowered compared to standard melee, whether that be you dishing it out or receiving it, and I had a bit of trouble with Bombs (some wonderful returning classic Final Fantasy enemies throughout, I saw a Cactuar too but a bit like a Crystal Lizard, he pegged it!) until I tried using Soul Shield and throwing their fireballs back at them, and a few of those will cause them to Self-Destruct. I think the demo did a good job of giving you the tools to take enemies on in this sense, and using the Soul Shield is a must - it felt like it was pushing you towards it more than what I experienced in Demon's Souls, where it's more of a smart option if you can land it, but not totally the be-all-and-end-all if you choose not to. No back-stabbing in this demo for anyone curious about that. Rather than bonfires, Cubes are your place to restore your HP, MP, and stock you up on potions (in the demo I think I only came across a handful of potions being dropped by enemies, so they're in pretty limited supply), reviving slain enemies and removing unclaimed items from the field, and of course you return to the last field you've touched. Not sure if difficulty has any bearing on the number of Cubes in the Temple, but they were plentiful in the demo. Along with this there's also an option to optimise your equipment, so again, it feels like it could be a good first place to familiarise yourself with Souls mechanics if you're looking to get into those games. I didn't really come across many light puzzle elements, though there was one time where I kicked a ladder down to make a shortcut, but the demo didn't really give you a good reason to go back that way; there was also one occasion where I accidentally nudged a Bomb off a ledge and it exploded and killed some of the enemies below. Some small rooms off the beaten path, but absolutely nothing like Souls, at least here, in terms of larger, interconnected spaces. There's also an option to 'Abandon Mission', which I didn't try out, but I'm curious as to what it is; I'm guessing it just takes you back to the start of the Temple, but that seems a bit counterintuitive in a game like this. The animation for opening doors will look very familiar to most. General background music plays as you make your way through (unsurprisingly, Chaos Temple from the original Final Fantasy is mixed in there), and there's also some encounter music, but it feels a bit out of sorts with the Main Theme (which is pretty damn epic, if I'm being honest), as the standard battle encounter music is more electronic and modern. Defeating enemies earns you experience which will in turn level up your proficiency in the job role you were using, awarding you points to further upgrade your skills in that job through a skill tree. You can watch short clips on what the new skill will look like if it is visually distinct from others, and while there are three Basic Jobs in this demo (being Swordsman, Mage, and Lancer) that you can access through picking up certain weapons or getting to certain points as you go through, there are also three Advanced Jobs you can access for them by reaching the end of their respective skill trees (namely Warrior, Black Mage, and Dragoon). Each have their own weapons and abilities, you can save preset loadouts for future use, and you can quickly swap between any two Jobs on the fly by tapping Triangle. I imagine the experience multiplier was bumped up a bit for the sake of this demo, but in my first playthrough I got to Warrior and Black Mage in the Advance Jobs, but you pick up Lancer quite late on, so I didn't manage to really give that a go or get it to Dragoon. I was really pleasantly surprised to see jobs in this, my only wish would be that unlocking a new job came with its own distinct look, I would have liked if becoming a Black Mage netted you a look based on the classic Black Mage appearance from the original Final Fantasy with a blue cloak and pointed hat. Speaking of which, there is a loooooooot of equipment that you'll pick up, either from chests or defeating enemies, and I'm not sure if it was them wanting to make sure you were well-equipped for the demo, but I really didn't understand the benefit of carrying so many swords around with me. Again, feels like one weapon per job type and then having rare equipment to find for each would be the way to go. I do want to briefly talk about magic in particular, as I had good fun with it and think it's implemented pretty well. Obviously it uses up some of your MP gauge, no surprise there, but to access it once you've changed over to being a Mage or Black Mage, you hold down R2 which brings up this wheel and that blue ring starts charging in a clockwise manner, and you select the magic element you want to use with your left stick, so for example as you hold R2 with Fire selected, it will charge up from Fire, to Fira, ands then Firaga once fully charged, and you release the trigger to attack. There's a bit of risk-reward, though, as while you prepare a magic attack, you can't move your character, however you can cancel out of it if for example an enemy is charging at you by dodging with X / Cross. And, as you can see above, magic will also be used on environmental hazards to clear them, so I'm curious to see how heavily that features when the game eventually releases. Which brings me onto the boss of the demo, Garland. I mentioned it before in a spoiler tag with the boss's name, but I'll do it here without: this boss battle reminded me very much of a certain battle in Demon's Souls - with the attempted grabs, jumping up in the air and throwing stuff down at us, the charged attack into the floor which ends up being a wider range AoE-type deal, the speedy charges from across half of the room - and I loved it. I want to say he wasn't as aggressive here as a Souls boss, but there were times where he was absolutely chaining one attack after another, and if you don't react quickly enough, you could easily go from 3/4 health down to none at all. He cuts an imposing figure, is a really fun challenge, and the music in his second phase harkens back to the original Final Fantasy in a really fun way. It does a great job of forcing you to balance multiple aspects, for example if you go in with ranged magic attacks you don't have any items to replenish your MP (at least that I came across in the demo), so you need to use Soul Shield to build your MP back up, but be careful to not get greedy as he can break your stance pretty quickly if you parry him a lot and then don't manage to dodge away. Charging a Thundara, having him lunge at me from across the room and then dodging it, backing away, him throwing a fireball my way, using Soul Shield to absorb it and throw it back at him just before dodging away because he follows up instantly with a flame-coated sword charge felt so great. I want to reiterate for like the twentieth time: this absolutely feels like a natural jumping in point for these games because, as I mentioned, Cubes are plentiful throughout; unlike Souls there's a Cube right outside Garland's room, so you don't need to really worry about making your way through any of the Temple again. Sure, that comes with its own missed elements from those games (like not learning the level inside and out), but I think it's great that there will be more options, and I also just love the process of learning a boss fight (as much as I loved it in Demon's Souls, I loved learning attack patterns the most when it came to the bosses). I would hope in the actual release it didn't happen until after a number of attempts, as it happened after my first in the demo, but boss hints turn up next to the door too after losing, which again, will help a lot of people to adjust I feel. The demo ends pretty abruptly after that, but I really enjoyed it from a gameplay perspective. As I mentioned above, if you've played a Soulsborne game to completion before, it's probably best to play this on Hard; my biggest difficulty with Normal is that regular enemies felt like relative fodder (at least after I learned how to best handle Bombs!) compared to Garland, and so I wasn't as prepared to slow myself down, as I didn't really have to do that throughout the rest of the demo. I want to play through it again on Hard to see what that's like and to try out the Dragoon, and would be curious to see if the windows for dodging and using your Soul Shield are a bit more cruel at a higher difficulty than they are on Normal. Downside is, as I mentioned above, the characters themselves (at least in the demo and trailer) feel very one-note, I feel the game might be more enjoyable without your two companions in the way half of the time, and the dialogue is pretty atrocious. Scale it back, get rid of this plain Jack guy (by the way, don't understand why they showed him off in the trailer like the Scalebound guy in a plain t-shirt, because you pick up armour almost instantly in the demo), get rid of his friends: make this a create-a-character game with more elements of classic Final Fantasy and less edgy and aimed at teens (it's PEGI 18, for crying out loud), convey your story through the cutscenes if you have to, but I hope Team Ninja heed the feedback from the survey and realise that the biggest thing getting in the way of this game being great right now is pretty much everything we've learned so far to be directly attributable to Square Enix.

Presentation on the 28th for Kazuya will be 40 minutes long and have no info on the next challenger (not unexpected at this point):

Nintendo UK have confirmed it's coming over here

It's absolutely crazy to me, especially after what Mario got last year and because of how much growth Zelda has shown across the board since Breath of the Wild, so much being money left on the table (making this a truly Nintendo move). In the case of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask it makes me wonder if they are considering adding N64 games to Switch Online, but I guess I'm tracking those down for 3DS, and maybe considering getting a Wii U for Wind Waker and Twilight Princess when I get to them? So this was their redemption plan for the Wii U all along...

Yeah, I'm rewatching this a bunch. Still feel like this game has yet to have a trailer of the calibre of Breath of the Wild's E3 2016 or January 2017 Switch Presentation ones, but I'm stoked. Some stuff from rewatching it: • love that shot of Link falling after the light emerging from the darkness, very Skyward Sword. Was hopeful in my post this morning that the castle going into the sky was a sign of the map expanding vertically (in the skies and underground), and very happy that seems to be the way that they're going with this. • the more and more Breath of the Wild stuff we see, the more and more difficult it's going to be to convince me that Fujibayashi and others high up in the creative process are not MASSIVE fans of Princess Mononoke. How the first game ended, the arm here from the first trailer, the fact it appears to be cursed but also provides some sort of benefit (strength or otherwise), the melancholy of the open world...gah, it's got that vibe. If any of you haven't seen Princess Mononoke before but are big fans of Breath of the Wild (or are just a big fan of cinema in general), it's on Netflix, so you have now excuse! One of my absolute favourite films. • that ancient golem looking thing with the Sheikah eye looks cool, and bokoblins camping out on a Stone Talus is absolutely hilarious. • I can't remember if Link's nails were that apparent in the first game, but that shot of his arm being taken over makes me think he needs to cut them. Dude's bearing some claws! • that new Rune which seems to reverse time (?) by stopping and setting that rolling spike ball back up the hill looks cool as heck. • dragon head flamethrower gauntlet looks awesome!!! • when the weird chant-sounding stuff from the first trailer comes in, it sounds much more pronounced than before. Imagine playing it backwards will probably say some more stuff! • Castle Town seemingly confirmed to be fine, looks like it's strictly the castle that's taking off and was a pretty clean break • I'm guessing I wasn't the only one left waiting on that shot of the castle against the sunset for a title, right? Also, really need to shout out the music in this trailer after we transition to the light. I LOOOOOVE that melody and how it builds and then crescendoes from 0:39 to 0:50. And I adore the erhu, that lonely erhu at the end sent chills down my spine (just like when we occasionally got to hear it in the first game). Really hope this makes 2022, which if we don't see too many delays is quickly stacking up. Between this, Final Fantasy XVI, Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarök, Starfield, and probably some others I'm forgetting...hoo boy. If none of them get delayed I think we could see one of the most split years for GOTY across the industry, it's absolutely stacked!