Microsoft's E3 Conference Review and Wrap Up

Microsoft’s E3 conference started off with a big Halo bang. A single player and multiplayer trailer kicked off the show, demonstrating an emphasis on quality and player experience. After 343’s Master Chief collection debacle it only makes sense that they’d be focusing so heavily on stable and accessible game play.

Microsoft’s first new IP, Recore, had a teaser trailer that demonstrated what kind of game the players should expect. Recore is made by Inafune, the mega man co-designer. Recore seems like it will be following a female lead protagonist as she collects core’s and places them in robots to help her fight, and potentially solve different types of puzzles. The game focuses on battling against red cored robots with your blue cored robots.

Next, a huge announcement from Microsoft is the new backwards compatibility of the Xbox One. Starting this holiday season for all players, and earlier for members of Game Preview, backwards capability will include over 1000 titles including Mass Effect and Rainbow Six Vegas.

The new Xbox “Elite” controller took the stage, designed for elite gamers on the Xbox One. New features of the controller include: four interchangeable paddles on the back, hair trigger locks for shooter precision, button remapping, and swappable components. The Elite Controller his retail in October at the price of $149.99.

Longtime partners of Microsoft, Bethesda took the stage to demonstrate even more Fallout 4. Specifically, Todd Howard wanted to emphasize that mods made for Fallout 4 on PC will be usable on the Xbox One version of the game.

The second big company at Microsoft’s conference was EA who demonstrated new games and features coming to EA access including Titanfall this week and Dragon Age Inquisition later this year. The big selling point for EA access is the ability to play some of Ea’s newest games before release. EA access will be free to Xbox One Gold members this week.

For its first appearance at E3, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 showed off a trailer, and gameplay later at the EA showcase. Some unique playable classes, new missions, and new drops will be available in the new game.

Forza Motorsports 6 was announced for a September 15^th release, with 26 tracks and hundreds of cars, Forza looks to celebrate its 50^th anniversary with a bang.

In Big News Bandai Namco showed off a Dark Souls 3 trailer at the Microsoft conference. The new Dark Souls seems to see the return of the Giants to the world. Fans of the series will recognize the giants the invading force of Drangliec, and the originators of the boss souls.

Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft, hit the stage to show off all of the brand new Tom Clancy game line up including The Division and Rainbow Six Siege. The Division is an MMO shooter for consoles, where players travel through a post-apocalyptic New York stuck in a perpetual black Friday/ Christmas season. Rainbow Six Siege, due out later this year, is a squad based player vs player shooter that focuses on the utter destruction of environments. Siege will also include backward compatible copies of Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 for the Xbox One.

Independent developers and games took up a huge part of the Microsoft conference, over a dozen independent exclusives were shown at the Microsoft conference with brief 1-2 second clips of each. The three biggest indie games shown were ION, Tacoma, and Cuphead.

Timed Exclusive, Rise of the Tomb Raider, had a massive gameplay demo. Showing cinematic and gameplay features, the trailer showed Lara Croft scaling an ice covered mountain, surviving avalanches, long jumps, and a massive Storm. The rest of the trailer showed brief glimpses of what players can expect from the game, demonstrating the diversity in environments and hinting at some supernatural elements of the game.

Rare fans rejoiced as Rare announced the release of “Rare Replay,” a collection of the 30 best rare games available to play on Xbox One. Rare Replay includes favorite titles like Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

Rare wasn’t only announcing the re-release of its old games, but also a brand new IP titled “Sea of Thieves.” Sea of Thieves is a pirate-focused MMO. Playing with other players, you will create a crew and battle for control of the seas against other pirate factions. Players will also battle supernatural forces as they hunt for new lands and treasure.

There was a brief focus on the free-to-play asymmetric 4v1 game, Fable Legends, which is still playable across Window 10 platforms.

Microsoft then made a huge announcement that they were pairing with valve to work on Virtual Reality technology, and then quickly moved on to oculus, and even more quickly onto the Microsoft Hololens. Microsoft officially announced its Minecraft as an amazing app for gamers on the hololens. Gamers across platforms will be able to play in the same world as a player using the hololens. Hololens players will have god-like abilities, like the ability to control the weather, and see areas not yet accessed by players playing normally.

The last major title to hit the Microsoft was from the Gears of War team, announcing an HD rerelease of the original Gears of War, and a Gears 4, a brand new game in the series. The demo for Gears 4 was incredibly dark, which made the graphics and the game play really hard to see. However, the game did look really fun, and presumably it won’t be pitch black the entire time.

For more E3 news during the event you can follow me on Twitter @forgedinflames or stay here for the Sony E3 summary and wrap up report!

Bethesda E3 Review

 Bethesda’s first-ever E3 conference opened with applause and a video message from the Bethesda team. The team discusses what makes them love games so much, and how they put this passion into their own games so that everyone can love their games as much as they do.

As the video fades to black Pete Hines steps out on stage and officially begins the conference. Hines introduces Marty Stratton, the executive producer of id software, who introduces the brand new Doom. Stratton states that Doom has always been about three things: badass demons, big f*ing guns, and moving really fast. Stratton states that these are the ideas that they focused on when creating the new Doom game.

Doom takes place on a base on Mars and players make their way from the base into the very depths of hell. The gameplay demo shown during the conference certainly looked like the game was a true successor to the original Doom. Doom will be an fps, gory, shoot ‘em up, that includes a large array of weapons includes the double-barrel shotgun, a massive chainsaw, plasma rifles, and more. The graphics looked amazing, but players should never expect a final product to look as good as it does during E3.

id Software is also bringing the beloved multiplayer to the new generation that will include maps from Mars and Hell, demonic power-ups, vertical traversal, and customizable levels. Customization is huge in the new Doom in the form of “Doom SnapMap,” id software’s new content and mission creator that looks a lot like the level creator from TimeSplitters.

After Doom’s announcement ended with gameplay from Hell, Pete Hines returned to the stage to announce Bethesda.net. Hines stated that Bethesda.net will be the “heart of all our games going forward.” Players will be able to find all information about Bethesda and it’s games on Bethesda.net instead of having a bunch of different domains.

Next, the Battlecry team gave a brief glimpse at their MOBA shooter. There weren’t many details about the new game save for the introduction of a new playable class. The Battlecry announcement ended by the opening of the Battlecry beta registration officially opening at Battlecrythegame.com

The next big announcement came from Bethesda’s Arkane studios. The announcement included a trailer for the highly-anticipated Dishonored 2, and an HD remake of the original Dishonored that will include all of the DLC for current-gen consoles.

Dishonored 2’s trailer showcased a “new” female protagonist that was later revealed to be Emily Caldwin, the girl Corvo saved from the first game. The Arkane studios team announced that both Emily and Corvo will be playable characters in Dishonored 2, both with unique moves and abilities to tackle each mission from a large variety of ways.

Dishonored 2 will be taking place in a new coastal location, where a supernatural being has taken control. The story follows an older Emily and Corvo attempting to take down the new tyrant using their supernatural powers and steam-punk weapons.

Next, A brief message from the Zenimax team showed the future of Elder Scrolls Online, which was just released on Consoles. New additions to the game will include new content like the infamous Dark Brotherhood.

Piggybacking on the update from the Elder Scrolls Online, Pete Hines announced the release of a new Elder Scrolls themed strategy card game “Edler Scrolls Legends,” that looks like a good competitor for Hearthstone. Legends will be available on PC and Tablet devices.

Pete Hines then announced that that was the end of Bethesda’s first E3 conference only to be met with boos and screams that he forgot about something important. Pete Hines then happily welcomed Todd Howard, the game director of Bethesda Games, to the stage.

Todd Howard ushered in new gameplay footage from the new Fallout 4 game.  Fallout 4 was announced before E3, but all players had received was a new trailer, now players are able to see what they can actually expect from the game.

Fallout 4 begins right before the bomb drops, allowing players massive customization of their male and female players, both with full voice acting. While players will only play as the sex that they exit the creator from, any changes made to the other sex will remain, and a baby will be created that will have features from both parents. After exiting the creator players are met with a door-to-door salesman where they pick their SPECIAL skills, which is the system Fallout uses for player attributes like strength and luck. Shortly after, the town goes is instructed to run to Vault 111 because the nuclear war between China and the US has officially begun.

Time in the vault is not shown for the sake of keeping that part of the game unspoiled, but Pete Hines stated that the player is the sole survivor of the vault and leaves it 200 years after the bomb dropped. Shortly after exiting the vault players meet their dog, who is now command-able. Later in the showcase Howard proudly announced that Fallout 4 will include a layered armor system, customizable weapons and power armor, and the ability to create multiple settlements using parts from around the world.

Fallout 4 will be available to consoles on November 10^th, 2015. A collector’s edition of the game will include a wearable pip-boy that houses a mobile device. The purpose of holding the mobile device, is that a pip-boy app will be available at the game’s release that will work like a “second-screen” experience that will allow players to use their pip-boys from their phone instead of in game if they choose.

Later, at the Microsoft conference, Todd Howard announced that PC mods for Fallout 4 will be usable on the Xbox version of the game. No announcement for a similar feature has been made at Sony, but the Sony conference may prove otherwise.

A full Fallout 4 announcement review will be available here in a while.

The first-ever Bethesda E3 conference ended by announcing that attendees of the conference would receive unique mini-figurines from Fallout, Doom, and Dishonored.

Our Take: Very, very, very excited for the upcoming year of Bethesda games.