VIDEO Gaming on a Sunday Afternoon: E3 2018

Unless somebody pulls a crazy curveball I'm not expecting much like that this year. If anything a lot of companies seem to be announcing stuff ahead of their conferences so titles don't get lost in the shuffle - and what would have been a big one, Rage 2, got revealed in the infamous Canadian Wal-Mart leak.

 

The story for Gears 5 looks a lot more interesting than 4's was. Gears Tactics also looks like it could be good but from what I can make out it's only on PC so I won't be able to play it unless they put it on Xbox One as well.

The highlight for me though is Just Cause 4. I loved JC3 so I can't wait for this one. It's actually coming out this year too unlike most of the other games revealed which is great.

 

I'd be hugely surprised if it isn't.

 

Oh? I'll have to look at the DMC5 trailer tomorrow.

Hopefully the Tales of Vesperia remaster isn't XB exclusive.

 

The Cyberpunk trailer was nice, but I'm pretty sure its multi-platform. Good for Microsoft to show the trailer first, but a lot of the trailers were multi-platform. If Cyberpunk was (console) exclusive, there would probably be more raging on the 'net by now. Not sure any were huge surprises, partially because of leaks and partially because it was obvious (oh, another Gears of War and Forza, as expected).

Glad Tales of Vesperia got a trailer. Not sure if its exclusive, don't think I saw a "only for xbox", but not sure. That would almost be funny considering Vesperia was originally part of Microsoft's attempt to break into the Japan market with the 360 (and failing). We should have confirmation soon.

The Jump Force trailer was a bit more surprising, as I thought Microsoft had given up on going for the Japanese fandom (compared to Vesperia's history). I wonder if its because Sony's conference will mainly be focusing on four big games so Microsoft went for quantity. New KH trailer (is every villain coming back?), but we already got the release date earlier.

Halo Infinite looked ok but honestly boring. Have they dropped the 6, is it a spin-off or something, what? Well, its still early and so hard to care. I think the Halo 5 early trailers had Master Chief in that cloak and facing a giant monster? Which was pretty different from the final game, so anything goes really.

Not bad conference, decent, but so far no huge shocks. If it had been Halo 6, maybe more obvious, and a lot of things probably won't be out until 2019 or later.

 

Bandai Namco Brazil accidentally tweeted it would be out for Bone, PS4, and Switch, and the official website leaked early with PS4 and Switch also listed, so... I'm guessing not.

 

They were going to make this play regardless, the Bone's library is perceived as thin, and at this point in the generation you're principally targeting people looking to come in late (whose choice hasn't been made for them by their friends (which are basically automatically PS4 purchases at this point)) or who want both systems to pick up exclusives. While it's going to be interesting to contrast with Sony's approach, if it's as sparse and/or tight as they've made it sound, I don't think the "winner" matters anymore until we're staring down the PS5 and the... I dunno, Xbox Revengeance or whatever, and I think they both know it.

 

Mark my words, set a reminder, whatever, even that makes more sense than what they'll actually go with.

 

Xbox Minus One? They're doing so badly they're going into the negative numbers. Yeah, they're not actually doing that badly but hard to say they're winning.

I'm not sure if its better or worse that Microsoft goes first (EA doesn't count, except maybe for setting a low bar). They had some announcements, but much of this is likely multi-platform or was leaked before E3 (accidentally or intentionally) anyway. Sony and Nintendo have had a good track record the last few years (Nintendo especially is making a huge push).

And saw this tweet, now that is a burn.

 

Xbox basically previewed E3 next year

 

Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Metro Exodus, Tunic, and Cyberpunk 2077 all look great. Forza Horizon 3 still feels fresh so I'll probably skip 4. I wasn't itching for a Frozen world in KH3 but we all knew it was coming, really thankful that game isn't coming out until January giving me plenty of time to enjoy RDR2. Gears 5 should be good, surprised to see Kait taking over as the main character but she is more interesting than JD so I'm not complaining. Devil May Cry 5 looks really cool, but I've never played one of those games before so I'm curious to see if I need to play them to enjoy the new one. Crackdown was one of my favorite games from last gen but nothing about the new one has appealed to me so far. I hate the Terry Crews angle they're taking with it (and is it going to take place entirely at night?). A pretty dull conference overall, but some cool stuff shown. Looking forward to seeing more of Fallout 76 tonight.

 

Sure enough:


Our long international nightmare (of the best Tales game being confined to the family of systems Tales fans mostly didn't own) is finally over.

 

I doubt it could possibly be as mind-blowing for you as it was for an impressionable young Ramza standing on the precipice of a hardcore weeaboo phase back in 2004, but it's held up reasonably well.

 

It would probably be better to just get the PS3 Symphonia version honestly. Japanese voices and closer to HD and the extra PS2 stuff.

Anyway, yay, confirmation for the other systems. I wonder if it'll show up in Sony's or Nintendo's presentations (maybe as part of a montage). Though Sony sometimes includes zingers in their presentation, but maybe not this year. I wonder how much extra dubbing they'll do, if any. I doubt they'll get Troy Baker back for this. Maybe it'll be like for Persona 4 Golden when they replaced half the cast for the remake (and the gap between regular Persona 4 and Golden was much shorter too!). Anyway, just glad to finally be able to play Vesperia on Playstation. Its been a long wait, but it'll probably be worth it. Now if only I had enough time to get around to finishing all those other Tales games on Playstation. Well, that and an HD port of Abyss maybe (they did it for .hack).

 

There's always the 3DS port of Abyss! (Do not play the 3DS port of Abyss).