Ok so the MS & Bethesda E3 showing …
Best MS E3 for a very long time. Lots of games, reasonable mix of early teases/cgi and proper game demos, format was really good with trailer after trailer and very little chat. 👍️
30 games, only 3 were not GamePass - which is hugely impressive. (BF2042, Diablo 2, Far Cry 6)
I’ll start with the small number of quirks/bad bits 👎️
- Very little was flagged as running on XSX - which last year was fine, but a year later you’d expect them to be pushing their premium console more clearly. Yes XBox now encompasses PC and cloud, but it’s a bit odd only 2 or 3 were tagged with captured on XSX and one of those was Far Cry 6.
- No mention of Age of Empires IV on Console
- That’s probably it really, Starfield “reveal” was a bit basic/cut scene to headline with (still 1.5 years away). Nothing substantial on Fable, Avowed or that other Rare game - but that does mean plenty more to come.
The good stuff 👍️
- The sheer volume of good GamePass stuff show coming this year and next.
- Good selection of third party stuff on GP - Back 4 Blood / Yakuza / Hades / A Plagues Tale Requiem / Among Us
- Contraband by Avalanche - probably a little ways out, but looked interesting
- Psychonauts 2 looked very nice, wacky.
- Halo - much better showing (and I thought the previous one was fine). Impressive visually. Still got the feeling that the open world aspects are not quite there yet? Campaign “footage” wasn’t in the open world and they lead with a nice long distance shot of the open world but then swiftly moved on to the MP. Also said something like the “start of the campaign” would be released with the MP this holiday - which suggests to me maybe a small campaign they plan to build on. No set date is unusual for MS at this stage, but understandable given the current situation.
- Flight Sim running on XSX looked fantastic - really looking forward to that and only 6 weeks away \o/
- FH5 - Mexico - great choice of location as it looks varied, dramatic and impressive scale wise. Some interesting tidbits, built from the ground up for NextGen - is it next gen only? Also ray tracing is ForzaVista only? So likely going for the 60fps as standard in gameplay. Looked visually stunning.
- Think MS bookending the presentation with two Bethesda XBox Exclusives (Starfield and Redfall - which looked very interesting if a little way out) firmly confirms the approach they will be taking with the big titles they picked up in the Bethesda purchase. PS will get what was contracted and continued support in existing service games, but news stuff - that’s all ours.