E3 2017 is in the books, and our contributors have a lot on their minds. Welcome to Day Three of Scholarly Gamers’ E3 2017 Postmortem! If you’d like to catch up on the week’s previous recaps, you can find them here:
We’re capping off Scholarly Gamers’ impressions with Managing Editor Grant Patterson, Copy Editor Josh Barnes, Webmaster Markus Piil, and Editor-In-Chief Matt Ferguson. Let’s jump right in!
Grant Patterson:
I’m of the impression that nobody really “won” E3 this year. Normally, a victor is crowned — whether we like it or not, it happens regardless — and year after year, we shower praise on the company that set our digital world ablaze. Problem is, all the major players showed off some really interesting things at E3 2017, but even with that fact stated, it seemed to me that the bigger story was what these companies didn’t show or tell about.
Case in point, people went apeshit over Nintendo’s Treehouse presentation, especially at the announcement of Metroid Prime 4. People are right to be excited, Metroid rocks, and it’s one of my all-time favorite franchises. I get it. What I don’t get is people claiming a video showing a logo as the silver bullet that won E3 for Nintendo. That’s silly talk in every fashion imaginable.
Furthermore, it’s great that we saw Super Mario Odyssey, but does it really justify the fact that the Switch has been on the market since March? By years’ end, it’s on track to have a whopping four games that define the system. Are we really that impressed by that, or has Nintendo successfully managed our desperation the exact same way they seem to manage supply and demand of their systems?
Microsoft dropped a massive bombshell into the arena, and that bombshell has a woefully stupid name: the Xbox One X. I don’t know what’s more sad, the fact that this name is the absolute best effort coming from a global multibillion dollar corporation, or the fact that they didn’t learn from the shockingly recent previous time they released a system at $499 versus a cheaper competitor with a larger foothold in the global marketplace. All in all, the reveal did more to inspire and impress the Xbox platform’s ardent faithful than it did in converting nonbelievers, which is a really bad thing, considering where their global sales numbers stand for the platform. System specs do look astounding, though; when the visual proof is in front of you a la Anthem, you take notice whether you want to or not.
Their show also kept touting the word EXCLUSIVE like it was going out of style, when in reality, timed console exclusives made up the bulk of these announcements. That doesn’t make sense to me. If I got into your girlfriend’s car for an hour, we would not suddenly be “exclusively” dating for that hour, and yet Microsoft applies this logic to selling up how many games are heading to their new product SKU. Your girlfriend isn’t really MY girlfriend because she’s going back to you in the end, and whatever “exclusivity” during that car ride would likely be minimal and platonic at best, completely falsified at worst. It is bizarre logic, bordering on outright falsehood, and it flat-out levitated my eyebrows during the entirety of their show.
Speaking of bizarre, how’s about that Sony conference? It’s like Shawn Layden came out and said “shh…no words” and proceeded to sweep us off of our feet with a goddamn YouTube montage. First of all, major games like Gran Turismo Sport got relegated to pre-show coverage, while the main event spotlight got handed to technical triumphs like Super Final Fantasy XV Bass Fishing Turbo HD VR Remix. I don’t know how many times we’ll get to see complete and utter narrative shifts in trailers for Detroit: Become Human before we’ll see a release date, but my money is set on a 2020 release with two more trailers that change the whole story yet again.
Seriously, Sony’s presentation was all kinds of boring, and that’s a terrible thing to say about an hour’s worth of Spider-Man hijinks, Viking Kratos channeling his inner Thor and Monster Hunter. The franchises they did show were franchises I’ve played to death (looking at you, Uncharted), and the new ones I saw looked the same as everything else I’ve played before (looking at you, Days Gone).
The brightest spot in this whole show would have been Super Mario Odyssey, had it not been for the miraculous virgin birth of Dragon Ball FighterZ. Holy shit, that game is the God King Emperor of E3 2017™, and I honestly can’t figure out whether that’s due to how unbelievably amazing that game looks or the fact that its diamond shone brilliantly in a conference chock-full of rough. Either way, thank God for Arc System Works, and thank God for Bandai for making that shit happen. My inner child flew in lunar orbit from that reveal trailer.
Although, all that hoopla overshadowed the hell of out Gundam Versus, and that game deserves far more shine than it’s been given from its own publisher, never mind the console manufacturer. The fact we didn’t see more on that coming to American shores is a colossal failure on both Bandai and Sony’s behalf. You should take the time to check it out, it’s going to be a fantastic game, and a potential sleeper hit of 2017.
So, to wrap this up, there’s Nintendo announcing a long-awaited Metroid console game with nothing more than a logo and some music, there’s Microsoft showing exclusives that aren’t exclusive at all while never mentioning the first-party exclusives that would actually sell their new system, and there’s Sony showing off everything except the shit we’ve all been waiting to see, like The Last of Us 2 or showing off some new Red Dead Redemption 2 footage.
That doesn’t even begin to point at the developers and publishers that don’t really need shows, like Ubisoft, Bethesda or EA. Yeah, I’m glad you guys are developing Beyond Good and Evil 2 — sure did take you long enough —but a trailer does not gameplay make, so until I see that, the game doesn’t exist. Anthem looks really cool, but if Battlefield, Battlefront or any other EA game in recent memory is anything to go by, your ability to truly enjoy it will be insidiously locked behind paywalls the likes of which have never been fathomed.
Here’s hoping E3 2018 is better, although it’s not going to be that hard of a bar to hit, as I’ve stated earlier. Call me pessimistic if you like, but I know phoning it in when I see it.
Josh Barnes:
Bethesda’s event was a little disappointing, although this is mostly due to the actual presentation and lack of direct interaction with the crowd, as it seemed to be largely on-rails. Also, ‘Bethesdaland’ didn’t fit my personal image of the company, traditionally a darker, more grown-up content creator than what was previewed in their showcase. Wolfenstein II looks like a solid offering, but just was not the highlight that I was hoping for from one of my all time favorite studios.
Ubisoft’s presentation was overall very interesting, though I missed the first half of it when the event was live. Assassin’s Creed: Origins looks like a breath of fresh air for the franchise, and I can’t wait to see more on it when launch time comes. As someone who hasn’t yet finished Unity (or started Syndicate), I’ve got my work cut out for me to wrap those up ahead of time, but the new trailer made sure that I’ll be checking those boxes off soon. As much as many people will disagree with me, I didn’t care much for the Beyond Good and Evil 2 announcement; I still haven’t played the first one. My favorite announcement from the Unisoft conference overall was Far Cry 5, but I’ve yet to be truly disappointed by one (Primal was the closest to a letdown, but still enjoyable in its own right).
I missed EA’s event entirely, as well as Sony’s. Caught up on the recaps, and though some of their upcoming content looks interesting, it’ll be a while yet before we see some near-production quality gameplay. From the perspective of a lifetime console gamer, beware of E3 demos running on PCs to show best-possible case scenarios.
Matt Ferguson
I spent E3 2017 in the wilderness, staying as far away from technology as possible, so I caught up on the entire event days after the majority of gamers had drank their fill. While I had seen smatterings of impressions on Twitter, I opted to stay away from the majority of opinions so that I could develop my own unimpacted impressions.
If I could sum up my overall views on this year’s E3 2017 presentations and trailers, it would be two words: anticipation and expectation. In many ways, this year’s E3 was focused on hyping up products that we had already seen in detail at previous conferences (both E3 and otherwise), are over a year and a half away, and which we will almost assuredly see presented in greater detail once more during E3 2018. We received gameplay for games in which we had previously only seen cinematics, names for products which had previously been enshrouded, but precious few new games to experience in the coming year.
I’m not referring to new teaser releases either, which were some of the highlights of the show; Shadow of the Colossus gave me goosebumps that no trailer has elicited since I saw the first reveal for Skyrim, and maybe the Final Fantasy VII remake announcement. I’m more referring to the plethora of games that we saw during the 2015 and 2016 presentations, which were just slightly expanded upon for this year’s showcase. Sure, I’m no less excited for God of War, Detroit: Become Human and Spider-Man than I was last year, and seeing some new gameplay definitely served to amplify my anticipation, but there are no release dates in sight for a wealth of the games we saw at E3 2017.
When the ever-ominous and vague “December 2018” was shown across the board as the release date for the majority of the releases that we saw previewed for the second, third, or fourth time, I started to get flashbacks to The Last Guardian reveal. At least we’re going to see Crackdown 3 released to us in the near future.
After being a vehement Xbox One supporter, I remember saying after last year’s show that 2017 was certainly going to be PlayStation 4’s year. Well, now it looks like that may be 2018, if we’re lucky. While Microsoft did not have any astounding new announcements this year either, they have definitely been left with a decent timeframe in which they can amplify their new (and current) consoles’ exclusive offerings.
Generally speaking, I really enjoyed the show. But, like many others, I just felt that it was missing some of the pizazz of previous years. There were some highlights for sure, though; I’m wholly excited to finally have more than one game to play on my Nintendo Switch when Super Mario Odyssey releases, and Anthem may be the single best thing I saw, period. But at the end of the day, this year was devoid of sock-blowing-off moments like the Fallout 4 reveal.
I think 2018 is going to be a solid year in gaming, but if E3 taught me one thing, it’s that I’ll spend the whole year waiting for 2019.
Despite a lot of the hullabaloo about E3 being disappointing for many, I found the overall experience this year to be quite good. A lot of years we’ll have a few huge surprises and a whole bunch of other “that’s fine” moments, but the strength of this year’s performances were that we simply had a lot of very solid stuff shown off instead of anything with a significant “wow” factor.
Microsoft had an incredibly mixed performance for me, but for a very specific reason. The Xbox gang managed to show off a whole lot of incredibly solid looking titles at their conference, but the fact of the matter is that this was their chance to sell people on the Xbox One X, and they really stumbled with that. They dropped specs and then gave no real showing of the meaningful differences people could expect on the console, and even failed to show a reason to jump over to Xbox in general, as the vast majority of its games will be coming to other platforms, despite their heavy use of the term “exclusive.” Still, Metro: Exodus, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Dragon Ball FighterZ, The Last Night and more managed to excite me. Anthem in particular looks too promising, to the point that I’m concerned about it remaining that quality throughout development.
Sony remains as headstrong as ever, showing many of their more unique titles off before and after the presentation or on the show floor rather than on-stage, while the spotlight itself was reserved almost exclusively for more of what we saw last year. Good showings for the most part, but still a big repeat. Also, despite the interest I have in Days Gone, I felt like I watched 6 minutes of almost nothing.
Nintendo did everyone a solid by simply showcasing a whole lot of interesting looking games, from those we expected to an actual Metroid game. Big N has a habit of keeping its E3 Direct straight to the point so that it can provide a lot more in-depth detail through its days-long Treehouse streams, and that approach did them wonders this year, showing off a 2D Metroid in action, as well as a lot of Super Mario Odyssey and an adorable new Yoshi title.
EA continues to lag behind everyone else by trying way too hard, and the misuse of influencers this year was a big factor in that. Despite having to plow through a whole lot of incredibly forced dialogue and far too much actual football/soccer talk, there were a few gems to be salvaged. The co-op only title A Way Out showed a lot of potential, and Battlefront II looks like it could finally be the game that people have been waiting for since the old-school Battlefront series.
Bethesda’s showing felt like it didn’t need to exist in near as big of a presence as it did. The big “Bethesdaland” setup with ferris wheel, themed restaurants, and the like gave me big THQ “over the top” vibes, especially considering they showed off two games that people largely expected, a standalone DLC, and then a whole lot of VR stuff. Please stop trying to sell people Skyrim at full price again, Bethesda.
Ubisoft managed to turn themselves around big-time this year by dropping the big personality host and focusing largely on the games instead of being a meme generator. When you manage to make a Rabbids game look enticing in 2017, you deserve a thumbs up. Far Cry 5 looks solid, Skull & Bones is super intriguing — though I’m worried about the emphasis on the ships themselves and the lack of actual pirate play — and Beyond Good and Evil 2 had a solid cinematic showing with a tone that I was really into.
Really a solid year overall, but I knew going in that no one was going to hit the wow factor of that phenomenal Resident Evil VII reveal from last year, which I still haven’t forgotten.
Markus Piil: