E3 2021: Digital Edition, TGA's 2021 & other 2021 events

[Glen-i]

My laughter helps to mask the tears.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Glen-i

[Hero-of-Time]

It honestly baffles me why they are skipping a console release. It’s money being left on the table.

[Ike]

Potentially interested in the FF collection, but it being on mobile probably means they have a horrible mobile interface.

Hoping they are holding off a Switch announcement because it's going to be shown on Tuesday.

[drahkon]

1 minute ago, Ike said:

Potentially interested in the FF collection

You really think they're going to sell this as a collection?

[Glen-i]

2 minutes ago, drahkon said:

You really think they're going to sell this as a collection?

Already confirmed to be individual purchases.

And yes, 4 of those titles are already available on Steam/Mobile!

EDIT: Here you go.

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by Glen-i

[drahkon]

Just now, Glen-i said:

Already confirmed to be individual purchases

[Dcubed]

Can we just delete the S-E conference entirely? It actively made the world a worse place for existing.

[Hero-of-Time]

15 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Can we just delete the S-E conference entirely? It actively made the world a worse place for existing.

I’m not so sure. Some of the stuff that has been created from the FF:O is gold.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Hero-of-Time

[Dcubed]

11 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I’m not so sure. Some of the stuff that has been created from the FF:O is gold.

The FFO fallout is literally the best thing that has come out of this E3!

Seriously! This year has been a disaster of biblical proportions so far.  It actually makes last year look like a masterpiece so far.  Unless Nintendo can save it? We would honestly have been better off with E3 being cancelled all together for everyone involved.  Sony definitely had the right idea.

I really don’t see the show surviving for another year.  Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Dcubed

[Hero-of-Time]

2 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

The FFO fallout is literally the best thing that has come out of this E3!

Seriously! This year has been a disaster of biblical proportions so far.  It actually makes last year look like a masterpiece so far.  Unless Nintendo can save it? We would honestly have been better off with E3 being cancelled all together for everyone involved.  Sony definitely had the right idea.

I really don’t see the show surviving for another year.  Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

I feel like lessons haven’t been learnt from previous years. Not every publisher needs a conference but a bunch of them are still trying to get one out the door despite not having the content for one. A fair few games that have been shown over the weekend weren’t ready to be shown. You had games that looked pretty rough and ones that were just CG trailers or title cards. Only a few franchises can get away with this kind of thing. 

[Sheikah]

Guardians of the Galaxy is probably the most interesting game of E3 so far.

I thought that game looked really quite shit. Uninspired combat with excruciatingly bad VA, and looked like it was made on a very small budget.

[Ronnie]

The dialog options and progression choices were interesting, I just wish the characters could have STFU for longer than one and a half seconds. Especially after that 57 minute gameplay demo.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Ronnie

[ArtMediocre]

We'll, this has been an interesting read.

Looks like I haven't missed much by skipping today's conferences. Looking forward to tuesday, and hope Nintendo will deliver.

Who am I kidding.

[Julius]

The Square Enix conference hurt a whole lot. 

The Guardians of the Galaxy game actually looks decent, had a fun trailer and some nice interviews, it coming in October meant a bit of a blowout with gameplay was probably a good idea, but it taking up nearly half of the show is when alarm bells started to ring. Also while it was fun in the demo, feel like the constant back and forth has the potential to get tiresome fast. 

Then we get Final Fantasy I - VI all getting remastered, seemingly based on their initial releases, the one thing that I've been nagging on and on about incessantly for the last few years...and it's for PC and mobile. Square Enix then proceeded to beat us over the head with the Final Fantasy Main Theme not just once, but twice (!) in a row for their mobile games after showing off the Mana remake.

Hoo boy. Real shades of the whole Final Fantasy VII PS4 port fiasco that happened at PlayStation Experience 2014, when everything they were showing and saying seemed to be screaming Remake but instead it ended up being the PC port coming to PS4: this isn't really what anyone was asking for or wanted. It's the 35th anniversary next year, we knew that going in, and while we could still end up seeing it brought across in the future in some capacity, that is something I have little interest in actively bringing up. If it happens I'll be over the moon but S-E don't deserve my optimism for that anymore. They're the games which defined Square for so long, damn it, they deserve good and easily accessible versions on modern consoles. 

Other than that, Babylon's Fall looked reeeeeeal rough. We last saw that game a year and a half ago and it looks far worse than it did then (some of those textures...urgh), and I left the trailer wondering if it was multiplayer or if those other characters were controlled by AI? The fact that I can't be bothered to look it up says it all really, and the nerve they have showing this off and promising post-launch content. 

And then there's Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Stupid title by the way. I was watching Kyle Bosman's Delayed Input the other day and he was absolutely right: the image you have in your head of Final Fantasy Souls is not what this game is going to be. But I didn't expect it to take such a drastic turn, and yes, it looks like a massive letdown. A prequel or alternative story of Final Fantasy I where you get to where this armour would have been awesome: 

Maybe stick with the Amano artstyle, heck seeing as it's a 35th anniversary game maybe have different sections be from different points in the franchise, and so on. It was really easy to let it run away with itself in our heads, and Team Ninja was doing it too? Single player, Team Ninja developed, Final Fantasy Souls for the 35th anniversary taking place around the first game - what doesn't sound awesome about that? 

Instead we're getting what looks like a drastic reminder that just because Square Enix has started to take strides in the right direction the last few years - finally getting Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts III, and Final Fantasy VII Remake out of the doors while continuing to build well on Final Fantasy XIV - it doesn't mean they aren't going to be prone to missteps, and I think it's the fact that we saw not just one with this game, but two with the I - VI remasters, that rightly has everyone a bit on edge.

These should have been relatively easy wins to take some of the pressure off XVI and Creative Business Unit III, who are also still hard at work on Endwalker, and somehow there's now more pressure on that game than there was before. It's insane to me. We'll probably see XVI at the next PlayStation event, whenever that will be, but it was rough today. 

I've still downloaded the demo and will be checking it out due to sheer curiosity, though. How can you not be curious about this? It looks like a trainwreck. 

Square Enix didn't bring their A-game today and they know it, they didn't treat what should have been the biggest week of gaming news this year in E3 as they should have. Despite their own issues in their shows, so far only Summer Game Fest and Xbox seem to have got that memo and put on a show (Geoff pulling off the Elden Ring reveal continues to go up in my estimation, and I genuinely might re-score earlier conferences based on how poorly E3 has gone so far).

My Totally Official Score: being burned by the rage of a thousand suns (so probably a 4/10; trust me, Gearbox was worse)

As @Hero-of-Time rightly points out, everyone wants to do their own thing and spread their news out (Ubisoft gave Xbox the better Far Cry 6 trailer, for crying out loud!), and I guess this is the drawback to Nintendo's Direct model doing so well. Everyone seems so confident E3, doing their own thing, but the thing is not everyone has the catalogue of Nintendo's IP's (actually, no-one does, and even Sony who are arguably the closest to their output in terms of consistent quality are very predictable) and the potential to blow us away on a pretty regular basis. It took a good year or so for PlayStation's State of Play to figure out it's flow, and I imagine it will take these other companies even longer than that, which means gaming news for the next year is only going to feel even worse. And I thought last summer was bad 

I think a huge part missing from E3 is the in-between, interviews and gameplay snippets filtering through from the show floor, hearing about behind-closed-doors demos and shady backdoor deals. It's a good thing the football has been on, because it's pretty much watching an E3 event and then moving onto something else, rather than being consumed by it. Even Nintendo have cut their Treehouse down to 3 hours this year. 

Expectations are low going into Capcom tomorrow, where I have little at stake but want to see someone else be happy this E3, be it something as big as Dragon's Dogma II or as small as Village DLC. Nintendo are impossible to predict, so just give me a title for the Breath of the Wild sequel and that will genuinely be enough after these other shows. The bar is that low. 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Julius

[Julius]

18 hours ago, Julius said:

18 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Is Somerville supposed to be a Playdead game?? Sure looked like it.

Major Inside vibes, for sure, but it's not! We've already seen a few screenshots of their next game 

@Ronnie I did some more digging and it turns out this does have a connection to Playdead: Dino Patti was one of the co-founders of Playdead, but left to found Jumpship (pretty apt name for the studio considering the context) after a fairly messy split from Playdead. 

From the company's Wikipedia page, which gives a good abbreviated version of events: 

Quote

Shortly after the release of Inside, on 19 July 2016, Patti left the company, selling his shares to Jensen. Patti felt that he was leaving Playdead "in a state where it can definitely manage itself", and stated "Following almost 10 incredible years building Playdead from an idea to two dents in the games industry, I'm leaving to seek new challenges." Danish newspaper Dagbladet Børsen reported that a rift had developed between Patti and Jensen around 2015,[16] that Patti described to Kotaku as "the supposed timeline for the next project(s) and where I am in my life now". The rift led to Jensen submitting a resignation letter to Patti from his position as creative director, though intending to stay on as a company executive. The letter had been misinterpreted by Patti as a full resignation from the company, and he subsequently removed Jensen's name from the Central Business Register for Playdead. This led to confrontation between the two and their representative lawyers that required intervention of the Danish Business Authority to resolve. This ultimately led to Patti taking a deal to sell his shares for 50 million Danish krones (about US$7.2 million) for his shares. Patti was disappointed on the way his involvement with Playdead ended, but said that "Arnt has been a really good friend and business partner for many years". Patti went on to found a new UK-based studio, Jumpship, along with film animator Chris Olsen, by June 2017.

From the rest of what I can find on Playdead it seems that Jensen was more the creative mind, while Patti was the one more attached to the business side of things. 

A real shame they split, but seems to be a boon for us players. If Somerville delivers it could feel like doubling the output of Playdead-like games, fingers crossed we see Playdead's next game sooner rather than later, as it's been a while! 

[Ronnie]

4 minutes ago, Julius said:

@Ronnie I did some more digging and it turns out this does have a connection to Playdead: Dino Patti was one of the co-founders of Playdead, but left to found Jumpship (pretty apt name for the studio considering the context) after a fairly messy split from Playdead. 

From the company's Wikipedia page, which gives a good abbreviated version of events: 

From the rest of what I can find on Playdead it seems that Jensen was more the creative mind, while Patti was the one more attached to the business side of things. 

A real shame they split, but seems to be a boon for us players. If Somerville delivers it could feel like doubling the output of Playdead-like games, fingers crossed we see Playdead's next game sooner rather than later, as it's been a while! 

Interesting! Thanks for doing some digging, it makes sense because the similarities between Somerville and Inside were obvious.

Very apt name for a studio!

Hoping to see Playdead's next game sometime soon?! It's been 5 years since their last! But if they keep the quality up it'll definitely be worth the wait.

[bob]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, bit here is a good site which keeps track of everything that has been announced, with filters for platform etc

https://2021.e3recap.com/

[Nicktendo]

Take Two really going out of their way to lower the bar even further for Nintendo tomorrow. 

I have zero faith they’ll be able to top THAT.

[Ike]

Port of a PC game has been announced for Switch. I’ll stick in a spoiler tag, but it’s been announced for a few days I think.

Spoiler

 

Edit: I see it was posted in the Indie's thread.

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Nicktendo said:

Take Two really going out of their way to lower the bar even further for Nintendo tomorrow. 

I have zero faith they’ll be able to top THAT.

I could have sworn we heard something a few days ago where we basically learned it would be a glorified Zoom call, that's why I didn't bother tuning in! Though you've made me curious now... 

EDIT: found it, it was part of how their event was described on E3's website: 

Quote

Tune in for our panel discussion on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the gaming industry with our partners - Games for Change, USC Games, Girls Make Games & Gay Gaming Professionals.

 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

I can’t stop laughing at this, mainly because it’s probably what @Julius reaction was.  

 

[Julius]

1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I can’t stop laughing at this, mainly because it’s probably what @Julius reaction was.  

 

Hahaha pretty much! 

Huh? Did they just say remasters of the classic Final Fantasy games?! 

That was such a weird musical cut. 

OH MY GOD THEY'RE ACTUALLY DOING IT, ALL SIX!

WHY ARE THE SCREENS SO DISTANT YOU MONSTERS I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING

YES, YES, TAKE ALL OF MY MONEY

Steam and mobile

*A moment of silence*

You bastards. 

[Hero-of-Time]

Here’s what was announced at the Limited Run show.

Quote

Zombies Ate My Neighbors / Ghoul Patrol Collection
Superhot
Double Dragon & Kunio-Kun Collection
River City Girls to PS5
River City Girls Zero
River City Girls 2
Strife: Veteran Edition
All Shantae Games coming to PS5
BloodRayne: Betrayal: Fresh Bites
Haven
SkateBIRD
Huntdown (with confirmed CE)
Axiom Verge 2
The Takeover
DUSK
Republique: Anniversary Edition
Going Under
One Step from Eden
RWBY: Grimm Eclipse
RetroMania Wrestling
Castlevania Requiem (Rondo of Blood + SOTN)
Castlevania Rondo of Blood (TurbographxCD)
Contra: Anniversary Collection
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (yes, that one)

The Shantae collection is very tempting. 

[Glen-i]

Capcom is starting now.

[Aperson]

Well, Capcom pretty much just said to start with what they're going to be showing in this show...