Julius

Development history video from Treehouse: I had absolutely nothing invested in this turning up, but very happy for those here who have been hopeful so so long that this would be making a return! Fingers crossed it delivers, I'm interested for sure, pretty soon too which is great!

Can I just say, even if it is only 3 hours this year, I'm so glad we've rolled off a great Direct straight into Treehouse. Seeing more of Dread and learning more about its development (and as someone who knew it only by name and that Samus suit) is great, and it just lets the hype continue, helps that it looks great for sure. This sort of thing is exactly what everyone else has missed this year. Genuinely the best of the major shows by 20 minutes in after Warioware (agree with @Ganepark32 that some of the indie shows were excellent this year). Not only that, but you get the sense they've held back on a lot too (no Pokémon, though I guess it could be at Treehouse; no Fire Emblem; barely any BotW sequel stuff and not even a title) which makes looking ahead exciting, but they basically filled out most of the second half of this year, thankfully.

Weird that the first trailer was very much focused on underground and this one was very much on the sky. Best way to expand the map is vertically, for sure, but definitely a weird showing. 2022 and showed so little, not even a title (still). A little nervous to be honest, but then again, their Direct was packed, hopefully they're saving it for something down the road.

Treehouse Live link by the way, not sure why they didn't keep it in the same stream. Metroid Dread talk first.

Takahashi and Koizumi have both said "one more thing" before. Cancelled each other out damn it!

They did it, the skies! Hell yeah!

HELLLLLLL YESSSSSS WE'RE SEEING BOTW2 LET'S GO

ZELDA PICROSS LET'S GO! He said "some" which I take to be more than two... anniversary collection and Breath of the Wild sequel inbound? Please?

Aonuma deliver damn it! Please! Don't just be here for HW!

Nintendo won E3 about 15 minutes ago by the way, and there's still more

Is this Advance Wars..? EDIT: it was, I can finally play one!

Been a string first half so I was going to say the same, but thought it'd jinx it. Breath of the Wild sequel is getting cancelled now, damn it @Dcubed!

Oh cool, we get to break windows playing golf in New Donk!

Bets on how many more quick montages/looks of upcoming games we'll get? That's already the second one!

"We brought back Metroid Dread so please stop asking about Mother 3"

Metroid Dread dream coming true for some of you, hell yeah

Oh hell yeah, now everyone can stop complaining about the lack of Metroid (I'm kidding, probably)

Mother 3 Switch port coming to Japan of course (but why Geoff damn it)

That and brushing off Min-Min's spring arm so she fell had me in stitches

Well. No-one saw Kazuya coming

Not the Portugal match, don't mind highlights for that, but still undecided about what I'm doing during Treehouse as Germany vs France is at 20:00!

You people scoring on a 5 scale disgust me (also 8/10 would be great)

Absolutely. I think my biggest gripes with the game based on the demo are the dialogue, and the characters themselves doing nothing to justify being there - in fact, the two other characters with you (the fact that I can barely remember their names says a lot) I found got in the way more than anything. Maybe it's just the demo, I don't know, but there was only an introductory cutscene and a brief one before the final boss, and there was nothing there to attach to, they barely do any damage, they go down pretty quickly and you have to waste potions on them, etc. Make the main character silent (or tone down the edgelord at least) and take those characters out and have the main plot tell the story like in Souls (EDIT: just to clarify here I don't just mean through background info, but rather just the cutscenes themselves), I think it's clear that that decision was made with how they view the western audience in mind. The actual game, based on this demo, is extremely solid. Definitely needs more work but I had a lot of fun, feels much more Soulslike than say Fallen Order, and may genuinely be a good way to ease into Souls based on the general gameplay loop (I know it's the Nioh team, but have no experience with those games other than seeing them in a few streams, so it's tough for me to compare to that). I'm kind of tempted to go through it again as I noticed in the survey there was an Advanced Job I didn't unlock for the final Basic Job that becomes available (yes, there are jobs, and they're actually pretty cool!), but I'll probably wait until I finish Rift Apart before going back. I played on Normal and it was a bit of a cakewalk until Garland, which took me a few tries as I was caught off guard a bit in the difficulty spike compared to the other enemies up to that point, so will probably crank it up to Hard when I get back to it too, as I think it might flow better for me based on that. Will type up some more cohesive thoughts after lunch, but if anything it feels like Square Enix's creative input might be getting in the way here.

Likewise. Just about to take on what I imagine will be Garland, think my time with the demo is coming to an end, so I'll post more fleshed out thoughts afterwards, but so far so good.