E3 2015: Wild Emotions; Part 3: Disappointment, Bitterness, Acceptance, and (Faint) Hope

A little late with this one, aren't I? Sorry folks, past couple of days have been pretty busy, and on top of that, I felt like I had to watch a lot of the Treehouse stream.

Well anyway, with all the shit that went down so far and with all these crazy anticipated titles being revealed, I figured anything could happen with the Nintendo Direct for E3 this year. In a sense, I was not wrong, but man oh man... Let's just jump right to it. This will be a much longer post because, thanks to Nintendo's Treehouse live streams, much more detail can be garnered from these games than just the five minutes some payed actor uses to play a game at a press conference.

Following the disorder of my previous posts, I am just going to go with the first things that come to mind. What a better way to start than with the first game they showed off, Star Fox Zero. Man, this game looks amazing. I really loved the whole developer commentary they added with Miyamoto reflecting on how he loved this show as a kid that had a similar kind of like space team that we see in Star Fox today. That was sweet. Star Fox Zero, as described, is neither an actual sequel or a remake but rather a re-imagining of the Star Fox games. Still, on a technical level and with practical terminology, this game does seem very much like a remake of Star Fox 64, although there are some twists to the old game and what appears to be some all-new levels as well. Now, the only games I've played are 64, Adventures, and Assault, so take of that what you will, but I think at least two of the courses they've shown are pretty much brand new.

At the Treehouse live stream, they started with Corneria, and one of the new things they showed off is the new Walker transformation. Basically, every vehicle in Star Fox Zero (aside from the Gyro it seems) has a transformation that adds some functionality that the default form wouldn't have. So for the Arwing, you can transform it into a sort of chicken-like mech that you can use to walk around on the ground and get a better aim on ground-based targets. I did not see them use this on the segments that weren't All-Range Mode, so I am not sure if you can use this form outside of that mode. The Landmaster has what I think was called the Gravity Master, where it basically turns into a hovercraft for a period of time, allowing you to fly over things like quicksand and whatnot. The Gyro doesn't seem to have a transformation, but instead allows you to deploy this cute little robot that can solve some ground-based puzzles and switches and such. The Walker can also be used for ground-based progression, as they showed off in the remake of Sector Y. In this level, the twist is that, instead of fighting those Gundam-style mechs that flew around, you enter a starship and navigate to its power core with the Walker. What was pretty cool was that, in turn, this turned the game into a sort of platformer. I'm interested to see how these platforming elements will be incorporated into more complex levels of this game.

Mobile-Suit: Chicken Little

Another new feature for Zero is being able to use the game pad to have a sort of "cockpit view" with the ability to use gyro controls to fine-aim at targets. As cool as that sounds, it seems like it will also be a little disorienting to try and look at that and at what's going on on the television screen. I might just end up playing it straight off the television screen only, since that's just the way I'm used to it with 64 and Assault. As for the levels, as I said, they showed Corneria and Sectory Y (called Sector Alpha in this version), and each stage had a bit of a twist toward the end. Another classic stage they showed was Titania, which also follows a very similar progression to how it played out in 64. Instead of Slippy being lost on the planet, you have to find Peppy, and when you do find him, you end up fighting this huge sandworm (or Scrapworm as it's called) rather than that creepy monster in 64. There were a couple of new levels too, one being Area 3, and another being a complete redesign of Zoness. Area 3 starts off as an All-Range Mode dogfight just outside this huge space colony that bears similarities to the halos from the Halo series. After the dogfight, you go inside and... do shit with the Walker? I don't think the Treehouse played through the entire level, so I can't say what you're supposed to be doing there. As for Zoness, instead of flying through on an Arwing, you are infiltrating a base with the Gyro. Still, the whole concept of avoiding spotlights returns, and Kat even makes an appearance.

All in all, this game looks very good, very much like the original Star Fox 64 game with enough new things to make it a different game. It looks like this will be the first properly better, new Star Fox game since 64. People complain the graphics look on par with the Gamecube, don't listen to them at all.

Hey that looks like... oh, no...

The next game I can properly remember, unfortunately, is Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Oh boy. I said before that after that press conference with Sony, anything could happen, and sure enough, anything happened. A new Metroid game was announced, but it wasn't just any new Metroid game, but rather a game that is so completely far off from what a Metroid game really is that a lot of fans were pissed. Metroid Prime: Federation Force is apparently a four-player coop, mission-based, first-person shooter, where you play as the Galactic Federation troopers in several run-ins with Space Pirates. The aesthetic is completely changed, going from the dark, sci-fi horror influences of the Metroid series into a light-hearted visual design, where everything is cartoony and you play as chibi-mechs. I honestly like the aesthetic, but only for a spinoff, which this game is. The problem, however, is that it's been five years since the last Metroid game-- eight since the last good Metroid game. Why Nintendo thought it would be a great idea to release a spinoff after this long is beyond my understanding of the natural world.

Of course it looks bad, the resolution is upscaled up the ass. Maybe we should wait until we are actually seeing it off our 3DS screens.

I am, of course, still angry that Nintendo did this, but I'm not being completely unreasonable. I will still buy and play this game, hoping that there will still be some things in it that will tie in with Metroid that will promise a new, main-entry game in the near future. Again, I don't think the aesthetic is bad for a spinoff (we got a freaking pinball game for fuck's sake, can't get more ridiculous than that), and honestly, people saying that the graphics are worse than Prime Hunters on the DS are gravely mistaken. There is no way in Hell Federation Force has worse graphics than that damn game. I think this is another case of people confusing aesthetic with graphics. I can't really argue that the aesthetic is better, because yes, obviously the aesthetic of Hunters is significantly better as it actually fits with the themes of Metroid Prime. To say that the graphics are better, though, is just completely wrong. The mech suits have reflective surfaces, the arm cannon is actually a 3D render (there is no way in Hell Samus's arm cannon, from the point-of-view of the heads-up-display, is a 3D render), there is far less aliasing and more polygons in the models. There may even be better texture detailing, but I cannot judge from the videos because video footage of the 3DS will always upscale everything, distorting the resolution of the game. Unless they were to actually show footage in native resolution, but then nobody would be able to clearly see what is going on because then the window streaming the game would be tiny. So I'm reserving complete judgement of the games graphics until I actually play it.

Beyond the graphics, though, the game does look kinda fun. Obviously not a traditional Metroid game, with a very clear lack of actual exploration from what was presented, but it does look like good coop fun, even if Monster Hunter 4 is better. Monster Hunter 4, though, is not a FPS, so there's that. Each player gets to set up a loadout, giving some more depth to it than just running in and shooting things. In one mission, the players had to work together to get these "ice beasts" trapped in some cages, while in another mission, they had to shoot down some blimps carrying missiles. This level with the missiles actually looked pretty nice, too.

All in all, I don't think this game itself will be bad. The Treehouse folks seemed to be enjoying it, even if they are super-casuals who don't know much of what makes a Metroid game. Somebody tried to argue that they were hamming it up and acting like it was fun, to which I disagree. The main guy who was kinda bossing everyone around was clearly not acting it up for the camera, as he behaved exactly the way I've seen people behave in coop games when they are trying to lead new players through it. So either he is actually a professional actor, or he is actually having fun with the game. What sold it to me, though, was when they had Ken Tanabe trying to talk about the game. Notice I said "trying," because the whole time he was talking everyone else was shouting and talking over him. If they were putting on an act and pretending to have fun, they would've stopped to hear what the guy was saying. So I'm not convinced these guys were acting like the game was any fun.

Speaking of Tanabe, the man alone has sparked so much interest over the game that it's to the point where the things he said alone held more attention from fans than the game itself. He said several important things in interviews over the past few days, and here are some of these things. First, he mentioned that Samus and actual Metroids will be in Federation Force, although to what extent is currently unclear. The next major thing he has said, which is very unfortunate, is that he does not believe a true Metroid Prime game will be made until at least when the NX is out, meaning no Metroid Prime game for the Wii U. Or he could be lying and then they reveal a new Metroid Prime game for the Wii U, and Nintendo's been known to do shit like this before, but I am going to take Tanabe at his word. Hopefully, just because there's no Prime game in development doesn't mean that there isn't a new Metroid game at all in the works. I keep hearing people take what he said about Sakamoto (he said that Sakamoto is the one who oversees a 2D game) as meaning there's a 2D Metroid in development, but I thought Sakamoto left the Metroid franchise? Whatever the case, there may be some hope for a new Metroid on the Wii U, or Hell, even for another game on the 3DS in the future,

The most interesting thing to come out of Tanabe's mouth about all this is that he mentioned he wanted to focus on the "relationship between Samus and Sylux" in the future. In doing this, he outright confirmed that SPOILER ALERT

Sylux was the one who chased Samus at the very end of Prime 3. Even though the ship at the end looked unmistakably his, there was still a lot of debate over this, without any real help with Nintendo's silence on the matter and Retro just saying, "I don't know what that ship could be." So for nearly ten years, it's been unclear whether that was Sylux or someone else, and now we got a confirmation from the producer of those games. This is, sadly, the most exciting development in the Metroid franchise, and I just really hope that now that they are giving the series some attention again, even if it's with this bizarre choice of a spinoff, they will finally get off their asses and start work on a new, proper Metroid game again. There is some hope, though, as a recent interview with Reggie confirms that they do want to work on another Samus-based game again (thank God, I can't believe we actually need confirmation of this), but who knows when we will ever see that.

Note: You may have noticed I've made no mention of Blast Ball. I refuse to speak about that horror.

Metroid Prime: Federation Force wasn't the only disappointment to disgrace the Direct. Nintendo also took Animal Crossing fans' hopes of a new Animal Crossing game for the Wii U and dashed them entirely with Animal Crossing: Amiibo Party, turning Animal Crossing into a Mario Party game, but with amiibos. I personally don't really mind it, though. I feel like the Animal Crossing game for the 3DS hasn't had a full lifespan yet, and I don't want people to suddenly put that game down when the Wii U version comes out because I want people to streepass with and stuff! Maybe my fears of people putting down New Leaf in favor of what could've been a Wii U game aren't exactly grounded; I mean, maybe that doesn't mean people will just stop playing New Leaf. Still, there wasn't a new Wii U game really announced, so no big deal.

I LOVE the character artwork ^^

There were several other games announced and shown off at Nintendo's side of E3, but I'm just going to focus back on the ones I found particularly noteworthy, starting with Fire Emblem: Illusory Revelations, known generally as the FE X SMT crossover. During the Direct, they showed off a new trailer with JPop, colors, and flamboyant costumes galore. Once again, though, what any of this said about what the game was supposed to be was completely lost on me. Fortunately, Nintendo had the presence of mind this year to actually show the game at the Treehouse live stream, which is what this game very much needed as until then there was no clue as to what this game was going to be like. So the gist of it is, you are playing as these characters in Tokyo, and one of them, named Tsubasa, dreams of being a famous pop star. Everyone in this world has some energy force inside them called "performa" (obvious reference to Persona is obvious), which draws in these beings from some other dimension called mirages, I think, who are basically the characters of Fire Emblem. So, if what little I know of Persona is correct, this game is in a sense like Persona, in which the demons that you summon (or are linked to your character, or something like that) are really the Fire Emblem characters.

The battle menu, also that's King Gangrel! Also, every battle is on a Jpop stage. I love it.

This game seems to have a lot of Fire Emblem fans upset, including my friend, since right now there doesn't seem to be much in terms of being a Fire Emblem game outside of having the characters and the Weapons Triangle, a sort of Rock-Paper-Scissors triangle in which lances beat swords, swords beat axes, and axes beat lances. The game also uses the elemental weakness found in Shin Megami Tensei, although that can be very much claimed to be borrowed from any RPG. Nintendo and ATLUS rightfully state to view this game as something else entirely from those two franchises. I may not be a Fire Emblem or a Shin Megami fan, but from what I've seen of this game, I am blown away. It seems to be an open-world RPG that is incredibly colorful and very much pushing to see just how over-the-top it can be, and honestly I find nothing wrong with that. So many games these days try their hardest to be so under-the-top ("realistic" as what they want you to believe it's called), that they're just plain fucking boring.

Uh, so yeah, Dual-Attacks in this game.

Dungeons in this game are also based on real-world locations in Japan. They showed off the first dungeon in the game, which is based off some fashion department store, and it uses mechanics tied in with mannequins and a giant maid dress for navigation, which seems interesting. The battle system follows a traditional turn-based, three-party system, where you use the Weapons Triangle and the elemental stuff to fully exploit enemy weaknesses. There is also apparently something where you can summon(?) or call in Fire Emblem characters to assist in a special attack. There was one attack where Tsubasa pairs up with a Fire Emblem character and do this whole dance and a Jpop number to attack a boss (who happens to be King Gangrel in the guise of some sort of jester with a top hat), and one of the developers went so far as to call it a Dual Attack. People in the Fire Emblem subreddit laughed at this and dismissed it as having nothing to do with Dual Attacks, but I mean if you can actually pair-up characters, isn't that what this is but with a more-- uh, flashy animation? They did say it involved something with character relationships, "Sometimes you'll get these throughout the course of the story, for example, when your relationship with a character... they'll unlock this throughout the course of the story as their connection with each other gets better." If the base mechanic is the same, who cares what it looks like? There is also this thing called Succession Attacks, where if the right conditions are lined up (not exactly sure what these are), you can pull off combo attacks with your teammates for what seems to be the same cost as a single turn.

Overall, this game looks brilliant to me. Very beautiful, the turn-based battle system looks fluid and fun, and honestly all the flashiness and ridiculousness doesn't make it feel wrong; it feels like professionally done well and it is very clear the team put a hundred percent love and effort into making this game, creating something unlike anything I've seen before. They even hired Japanese Pop stars to write songs for the game and have the voice actors sing these songs. How that is going to translate well in localization seems pretty terrifying, but hopefully Nintendo of America can keep up with the incredible ambition in this game.

Moving on, a game that will be more pleasing to Fire Emblem fans will be Fire Emblem Fates. This is the newest installment in the franchise, where you can basically choose between two stories that follow two separate kingdoms. If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically, your avatar is this prince of Nohr, ruled by an oppressive king that flashes this Western, gothic look that is actually pretty stylish. Later he finds out that he was actually born a prince of this clan, the Hoshido, who are enemies with Nohr and have a very traditional Eastern look to them, and thus you must choose who you want to remain loyal to, affecting your relationships with every character in the game.

One of the new mechanics in this game that they pointed out is the Dragon Vein, which your Avatar can use to "change the layout of the battlefield." From what they could show, one of these things includes creating a section that heals your units each turn if they are standing in it. I don't know how else this "Dragon Vein" can be used, but the idea of changing the layout of the battlefield with it seems interesting. It is also something enemies can use, so it doesn't seem totally imbalanced. One other thing I noticed immediately, aside from the much prettier user interface than Awakening (which is so awesome that I'm having a hard time wanting to write this post), is that when you transition to the battle animations, the environment is the battlefield around you. Basically, the camera just sorts of zooms in until the characters are 3D, and everything you see in the top-down view becomes their surroundings, as opposed to the different screen they used in Awakening for the battle animations.

Example of the game's use of 3D mode in the My Castle.

This "3D mode" is something that can be used freely in what's called My Castle. Even though they did describe some of its features, they never exactly described what the gist of it is. Basically, I think of it as the Barracks from Awakening, but it has its own map you can walk around in (like a battlefield map), you can customize it, and it interacts with StreetPass functionality and such. In this game, your character gets like a personal maid, who is female if you are a male character or is a male if you are a female character. It seems like you can get the other sexed maid later on, since they are referenced as actually existing. They do something for you in My Castle, not exactly sure what that is, but they also function as units in battles, and they seem to be kinda like the Frederick of this game: apparently very strong initially and has an advanced or unique class.

Getting back to My Castle, you can customize it with buildings you select and stuff, like shops or things that give you items like weapons and such. Another thing I've noticed is that each building, or shop at least, has its own 3D space, where your 3D character walks around in. Overall, they've improved the graphical fidelity of this game, to the point where the character models even make facial expressions during non-prerendered cutscenes.

With StreetPass, you can get stat boosts and stuff from My Castle, and you can battle the teams of people you've StreetPassed with inside that castle. The buildings you put up affect the battle, although they didn't get into detail on how that exactly works. Your opponent can break down these buildings, though. It also seems like you can have practice battles inside My Castle to test out your team(?), although it's unclear to me whether that is an actual feature or if it's just something they just used for the E3 presentation.

Each path in the game has its own uniqueness in gameplay. The Hoshido path is supposed to be a sort of easier storyline, where you can grind for gold, the battles aren't as hard, and the overall story and atmosphere is light-hearted. The Nohr path, though, is the more difficult path, with tougher enemies and no opportunity to grind. I personally hope this excludes DLC, because I'm a super casual with this series and personally like to grind in Awakening. From what I can glean about what's new in battles, enemies can now actually support each other if they are side-by-side. As for Dual Attacks/Dual Guards, they depend on the positioning of your units now, and I think they said that they are now guaranteed as opposed to being up to RNG. So, if I remember correctly, placing your units horizontally next to each other will always trigger a Dual Attack, and putting them vertically will always trigger a Dual Guard. There will also be Amiibo support for this game, where using the Marth, Lucina, or Roy Amiibos will bring them into the game.

So those were the main games of interest to me, with Xenoblade Chronicles and Fatal Frame also being particular to my attention. I don't really have much to say about either game, though; Fatal Frame looks like it will be an actually good horror game, as many horror games fail to be, but Fatal Frame has also been a longstanding franchise. Xenoblade looks more and more interesting to me, especially knowing now that there's more to the world than that Primordia continent of endless seas of green plains and cliffs. There's apparently a continent with a lot of bioluminescent stuff at night, so that sounds really cool.

I don't have any much more to really say about Nintendo's presence though. With the exception of how horribly disappointing the Federation Force reveal was, and perhaps the Animal Crossing: Amiibo Party game, their Direct was overall pretty serviceable with reveals and once again the Treehouse did a great job of showing off and making these games look really exciting, even Federation Force to some extent.

So because I spent a lot of time talking about Nintendo here, I'm just gonna leave off Square Enix's conference into its own post. They deserve it, too, for being so hilariously bad. Oh man.

E3 Part Three Post Delayed to the End of This Week

Just a heads up for you all. Funny enough it turned out that I decided to split these into parts as I did two years ago, since I found myself writing way too much for a single post. The last post will be focused on Nintendo's presence at E3 (as well as Square Enix's hilariously bad conference), but because Nintendo is continuing their awesome decision of having the Treehouse on the show floor to play their announced games, I want to wait until the end of Thursday to talk about this. I also just want to say that the Nintendo Treehouse has been a godsend that Federation Force desperately needed, although I am still angry that they chose to release a spinoff instead of a main entry game after five years of complete silence. Oh well. More on that tomorrow.

E3 2015: Wild Emotions; Part 2: SO MUCH HYPE I CAN'T EVEN

So I put down the Microsoft conference and I haven't watched the Ubisoft or EA conferences due to time constraints. Also I've seen the Ubisoft and EA conferences for the past three years now and each time I've only expressed very mild interest in what they had to offer. I did hear though that EA showed off the new Mirror's Edge and it looks great, so I'll have to check that out. So then I went to the Sony conference, and for the THIRD YEAR IN A ROW Sony has blown me away into a gust of hype. Right off the bat they unveiled The Last Guardian, a game made by the makers of Shadow of the Colossus that has been on development hell for years. That was fantastic, but that wasn't all.

Can I have this game now please?

I don't remember everything in great detail, so I'm just going to go through what immediately comes to mind. First there's No Man's Sky, which showed in spite of originally not being planned to appear. Last year I saw a teaser and thought it looked nice, this year I saw gameplay and I am mindblown. It is basically a sort of Minecraft but the scale is incredible. Instead of just one endlessly randomingly generating world, you have an ENTIRE UNIVERSE of individual planets that are generated. Billions of stars, infinitely even more trillions of planets to see. Add space battles to all that and you have what is pretty much one of the best games ever made, for me at least. This game was made exactly for me. The whole reason why I got into games as a kid was to see new worlds, which coincidentally with regard to this was through Star Fox 64, another space travel game of sort (although not a sandbox). This game pretty much speaks to a hundred percent of my fancies, so yeah, instant winner for me.

You see all those dots, or stars? You can go to all of them. And this picture isn't even a twentieth of the No Man's Sky's full scale.

The other game that comes immediately to mind is the next game the makers of Little Big Planet are making: Dreams. Apparently in this game everything starts off like a canvas, and you actually paint everything you want to make in a "level:" the characters, the environment, the objects, everything. So, from the trailer's implications, you can make pretty much anything, like a teddy bear gunning down a bunch of zombies. It all seems very bizarre, and I don't know about intuitive, but it was certainly unique. I don't know if I'll play this game because I think I may end up spending years trying to create something with its toolkit, but the game is certainly very fresh and quite unlike anything I've seen before.

This pretty much captures everything about what they showed about Dreams.

Another interesting game I almost forgot was Horizon: Zero Dawn. In this game, you are apparently some hunter in a post-apocalyptic(?) Earth where the humans of today (that is 2015) have long since disappeared, and now there are machines roaming about in the place of (or alongide?) wild animals. The whole humans versus machines and post-apocalyptic, abandoned world routine isn't exactly new, but this game sort of puts it in an interesting light by using this whole Stone Age vibe to it (meaning, like, the humans of the game's time use some technology but it's in the fashion of what things like Native Americans would use... I think?). I mean, like, the main character is running around hunting mechanical creatures with a bow and arrow (an electronic one that shoots EMP arrows and stuff). I don't know, it looks interesting.

Hunting with bows and arrows a la during the Ice Age meets Dubstep Dinosaur. I think I explained it better now.

And then there's Street Fighter V, which looks gorgeous, and it's about damn time too. Street Fighter IV has been around since nearly the dawn of the freaking Xbox 360, even though they've managed to keep it going through expansions. I don't know, all I know is, being a part of a fighting game community (Smash Brothers), I understand having the same game for a long while can get old. Even fans of Melee are still pining for a new Smash that is as technical as that game was (boy do I feel sorry for those lads).

They also showed a new Destiny expansion and a new Hitman game, neither of which I could particularly care for given that Destiny is massively overhyped and this trailer for Hitman is exactly the same as every trailer I've seen for Hitman. It almost feels like I'm watching the same game shift in development for over a decade.

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE!!!!!!!

After pretty much all this, my god, the bombs were dropped. I am still recovering from the shellshock I experienced when the bombs fell and essentially exploded in my face. I am still questioning what is real and what isn't ("Like, is any of this for real, or not?"). I don't mean any of this in a negative way either. What follows is a relapse of my watching this conference. It was time for Square Enix to take the stage; great, we get to see some Kindgom Hearts III! But wait, it's not Kingdom Hearts III, it's just some weird chibi Final Fantasy game. Once again, another spinoff from Square Enix, oh joy. This one doesn't look too bad, though, as there's an open world experience and a pretty nice looking battle system. Then, the spokesman cut on to their next teaser, and kind of spoiled it for everyone but also built up hype.

"Now many years ago Square Enix released a groundbreaking title that went on to become one of the most beloved games in Playstation and video game history..."

YEAH! FINAL FANTASY VI REMAKE, RIGHT? No wait, this guy narrating is too serious-sounding to be Final Fantasy VI. This sounds like a new Final Fantasy with its head shoved up its ass. Final Fantasy XV maybe? But wait, that sword looks vaguely familiar, and so does that "South Edge" name. People are getting off a train, this world looks fairly modern, and this whole, "The memory of a star that threatened all" hearkens back to something very familiar. Final Fantasy VII? Is this a sequel? This music sounds very ominous and creepy. Wait, what's this dark, grimy looking city? That looks like Midgar! And that looks like the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, the bombing mission! That's the reactor that AVALANCHE bombs. And that guy with the gun on his arm... Barrett? And that's Cloud! And that's the opening theme from Final Fantasy VII.

It's like my memories were made a lot clearer now.

Not even the title, but the game's logo appears on screen, then fades to the words, "REMAKE." An uproar from the crowd ensues.

BARRETT!

My reaction is kind of hilarious in that initially I had no reaction. I saw all that and thought, "This is ridiculous." I actually could not believe what I was watching, somebody was pulling off the most epic troll in the history of trolls. But it was real, and when I accepted what I saw as true, I didn't have an immediate outbreak either. I just sort of nodded and said, "Cool! They're finally remaking this game." Then it sank in, and after the conference started getting less interesting after the Batman trailer, I started freaking out (in a good way). The trailer kept replaying in my head and all those years of cock teases with Square Enix's stupid fucking tech demos and mediocre to downright terrible sequels and spinoffs of Final Fantasy VII flashed through my mind, until the original game's special moments all came back to me. At that point, I started losing it, I started laughing and squeeing and screaming and exclaiming that the unthinkable has happened (in a good way).

I still cannot find the words to properly explain how I feel about this. "Mindbroken" is one way. But I also find it kind of weird that they're remaking the game now, of all the times in the world. They just released Final Fantasy Type-0 for the PS4, they're still working on Final Fantasy XV, and they're working on Kingdom Hearts III. I'm not particularly worried for Kingdom Hearts III, and I honestly couldn't care much for what happens to XV at this point, but that's where the problem lies. Why would they be so stupid to remake this game when they still haven't released Final Fantasy XV? Who is going to remember that game now? If it flops, or even if it's just not received well enough, I'm willing to guess it is going to be completely overshadowed by this remake. Oh well. On the other hand, I couldn't be happier. Some of the most classic characters, environments, and scenes in gaming history are going to be recreated in such great detail now that this remake is going to possibly be the king of all video game remakes for a long time to come, if Square doesn't fuck up everything. Considering that they've held true to their remakes in the past (mostly, I think. I'm pretty sure the Final Fantasy X/X-2 remakes are very true to their original games), I feel like this game will be fine.

To further give an idea of the amazement this announcement struck not just me but pretty much everyone interested, here's a snapshot of a chat session that took place during this Square Enix segment:

[18:44:34] ~dun dun dun dun dun dun dun duuun dun~
[18:44:35] :p
[18:44:40] !!!!!!!!!!!
[18:44:45] THIS IS IT
[18:44:52] Final Fantasy time
[18:44:56] YAY, DLC
[18:44:57] FUCK
[18:44:58] nope
[18:44:59] not it
[18:45:00] Congratulations! Your eevee evolved into murdeon!
[18:45:07] Final Fantasy!
[18:45:14] FFXV
[18:45:19] nope
[18:45:21] wait, Kingdom Hearts?
[18:45:23] KH3
[18:45:23] what the fuck
[18:45:25] Bleh
[18:45:25] FUCK YOU
[18:45:26] DIE
[18:45:30] WHAT IS THIS.
[18:45:30] http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/06/09/exploring-the-depths-of-abzu.aspx Ooooh
[18:45:33] wait, what?
[18:45:33] what the hell
[18:45:34] LOL
[18:45:36] this is Kingdom Hearts?
[18:45:45] what..
[18:45:47] chibi KH?
[18:45:47] um, this is adorable though
[18:45:48] lol
[18:46:06] This is the remake of FFVII, obviously
[18:46:11] World of Final Fantasy?
[18:46:16] hahah
[18:46:18] HAHAH
[18:46:21] oh
[18:46:22] my
[18:46:22] god
[18:46:23] MORE FUCKING WIKI WORK
[18:46:24] what the hell?
[18:46:24] are they doing this
[18:46:25] FInal Fantasy XVI
[18:46:26] The crowd looks like they'd rather die
[18:46:26] Oh
[18:46:30] Nope.
[18:46:32] MORE USELESS CRAP TO ADD TO PAGES
[18:46:33] than be there
[18:46:36] Sony loses. SE loses.
[18:46:36] Lol
[18:46:38] OH
[18:46:39] LEE
[18:46:40] SHIT
[18:46:42] MORE RECURRING ABILITY PAGES
[18:46:42] okay, I like it
[18:46:43] FUCK ORR
[18:46:44] VITA.
[18:46:45] VITA.
[18:46:47] OH MY GOD
[18:46:47] HOLY SHIT BOYS
[18:46:47] nope
[18:46:49] not it
[18:46:50] KH3???
[18:46:50] IT'S HAPPENING
[18:46:50] OH MY GOD
[18:46:58] WHAT NO
[18:46:59] or is it
[18:46:59] NO
[18:47:00] wait Edge?
[18:47:01] I'M CONFUSED
[18:47:01] SERIOUSLY
[18:47:05] This is an Advent Children game
[18:47:12] Wow, everyone's really getting into this...:D
[18:47:14] This pisses me off
[18:47:15] THis is the music
[18:47:19] FFVII 2
[18:47:19] god
[18:47:20] LOL
[18:47:21] Many years ago, SE released a groundbreaking game
[18:47:21] TROLL
[18:47:24] As if we didn't already have to deal
[18:47:25] Dirge of Cerberus
[18:47:26] trolololololol
[18:47:30] HAHA
[18:47:30] HD Dirge of Cerberus
[18:47:32] I LOVE IT
[18:47:34] I'm fine with this
[18:47:34] With mobile crap
[18:47:36] no
[18:47:40] NO
[18:47:42] NO
[18:47:43] NO
[18:47:50] LOOOOOOOOOL
[18:47:52] is this Sephiroth narrating?
[18:47:55] They said the compilation was dead
[18:47:56] is this
[18:47:57] HD DIRGE OF CERBERUS
[18:47:57] NOPE BIATCH
[18:47:58] happening
[18:48:06] it's far in the future!
[18:48:07] IB Vg8qWVJUF»H
[18:48:07] b-w
[18:48:07] aw«
[18:48:07] BPHUSDFRK
[18:48:07] ¸JN
[18:48:08] HERP;OLHERHA,EHERTGWER�
[18:48:08] EAPU
[18:48:08] QW24T
[18:48:08] EGTE3
[18:48:09] YAH
[18:48:09] ERWU9GY23u=
[18:48:10] rtw234=
[18:48:13] WHAT
[18:48:15] SJKHFKGRT,DMFTBFR;G
[18:48:15] [~KujaRhaps@modemcable012.125-131-66.mc.videotron.ca] has quit IRC: Excess Flood
[18:48:22] Really? An HD Doc?
[18:48:25] *DoC
[18:48:25] WHAT THE
[18:48:29] FUCKING
[18:48:30] [~KujaRhaps@modemcable012.125-131-66.mc.videotron.ca] has joined #Wikia-FF
[18:48:32] I TOLD YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHERE THERE IS SMOKE
[18:48:32] WHAT
[18:48:33] fucck
[18:48:33] HAHAHA OMG
[18:48:34] WHAT
[18:48:34] WHAT
[18:48:35] THERE IS FUCKING FIRE
[18:48:35] NO WAY
[18:48:36] what the fuck?
[18:48:36] WHAT
[18:48:37] JHAFHDHFDHSF
[18:48:37] remakaeml;ra
[18:48:37] it's not Dirge of Cerberus!
[18:48:37] WHAT
[18:48:38] WHAT
[18:48:38] HELLO
[18:48:39] bhyjugkbvhwreklghurgkuvwrhbgverbnet
[18:48:39] WAHTTTTTTTTTTTT
[18:48:39] WHAT
[18:48:40] WHAT
[18:48:40] JIZZZZZZZZZZ BITCHES
[18:48:41] ntsrjhbvhjvsfkjhgvbfg'
[18:48:41] HELLO LADIES
[18:48:41] WHAT?
[18:48:42] I TOLD YOU
[18:48:42] fljhsdbvfksjdhbvfsdjkhnbvfgsd
[18:48:43] FACTS
[18:48:44] 'kjdnbhjbvfsdkjhbvsdfkjlvfsd
[18:48:44] WHOA?
[18:48:44] FIODSJHDIOKSJFKD
[18:48:45] ghjxdvbfhjbsdklv
[18:48:45] Hi?
[18:48:46] I ONLY DEAL IN FACTS
[18:48:47] 'why
[18:48:48] I TOLD YOU
[18:48:50] YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
[18:48:53] I'm going to kick all of you
[18:48:53] ?
[18:48:53] jesus h christ
[18:48:53] HELLO
[18:48:55] on a pogo stick
[18:48:57] ff7 remake
[18:48:58] on ps4
[18:48:58] WHAT
[18:49:02] OH MY MOTHERFUCKING GOD
[18:49:02] ITS HAPPENING
[18:49:02] WE DID IT
[18:49:02] NO
[18:49:03] SHIT
[18:49:06] FUCKING
[18:49:06] SHIT IN MY MOUTH
[18:49:06] now I can leave in peace
[18:49:07] WAY
[18:49:08] For real? O_O
[18:49:08] HOLY
[18:49:11] I WILL EAT MY OWN SHITE.
[18:49:12] FUCKING
[18:49:12] FUCK YEAH BABY
[18:49:13] WHAT
[18:49:16] TIFA IN HD

So yeah, it was a pretty crazy announcement. I still cannot believe it is real, now I really want to get a PS4 (or Xbone if certain conditions are met).

After that insanity, they continued to show off things that gamers have dreamed of for years with Shenmue 3. However, this announcement was a little odd. Rather than the company coming out and saying what they are doing, they're doing a... Kickstarter trailer? What? As the great Blue Highwind said about this particular moment, if Sony brought them and this game to show off at E3, why wouldn't they pay the developers themselves? Who knows? Maybe they actually are through their Kickstarter, which would be kinda weird. I actually know very little about Shenmue 3, but here is what I found out from Wikipedia: "The story centers on an 18-year-old man named Ryo Hazuki, whose father has been murdered by a mysterious man named Lan Di. Ryo embarks on a quest to avenge his father's death and unlock the mysteries of a legendary stone mirror." Also it is apparently not confined to a specific genre? Like it is an adventure but Wikipedia says it is also, "An epic adventure with movie-like cinematography and plot elements that include drama, mystery, romance, suspense and action. Shenmue offers a game-playing experience that includes elements of action, adventure, fighting, life simulation and role-playing games." Sounds like it was pretty ambitious. I'm sure now with Kickstarter and all, though, that can help get the game on its feet; as a matter of fact, I think I read that the campaign has already succeeded. Anyway, just goes to show how insane this year has been, with all these highly anticipated games, games people have been clamoring for for years, coming out of nowhere. Isn't this year's E3 great? And the majority of these are happening in this conference alone, holy shit!

I don't know a thing about this game, but if you do and want to support it, here's a link.

They then showed off a trailer for the new Batman Arkham game, in which the Scarecrow is the new villian. Sounds awesome. Then, the rest of the conference kinda lost steam. First they showed off Call of Duty: Yet Another Uninspired Game, then they briefly mentioned Kingdom Hearts only to talk about Disney Infinity for some reason, then EA and Dice came up to show of Star Wars: Battlefont Front, starring Luke Skywater Skywalker. While it's cool and all that this game is being revived, and what they showed looks beautiful, I have little faith in it because the removed the freaking space battles that were the best part of the series. So unless they put those back and don't force you to pay for it, I'm not getting the game, simple.

To close the Sony conference, they showed a demo of Uncharted 4. I have vaguely followed Uncharted, so I have no idea what's really going on, but apparently they stepped through a door and time traveled back to some point to save a guy? Sounds interesting. So with all that, it would be hard to imagine how Nintendo could possibly follow up that hype if it weren't for the possibility of them announcing a new Metroid game, along with already the other games that people kind of figured they were going to reveal. Unfortunately, what a bitter disappointment that turned out to be...

E3 2015: Wild Emotions; Part 1: Boredom and Mild Interest

Man is asleep, a kid is smelling his armpit,
another guy is checking his phone, a woman is having a good chat with someone.
What do these things have in common?
They're all the things I did at the Microsoft press conference.

I know I haven't written anything about E3 yesterday, but I'm still here! I really would like to write about each conference individually (like what I did in 2013), but unfortunately I have class to deal with and I just don't have the time to write about each conference like that. So instead I have to settle with a retrospective, and my god do I have one.

This year's E3, with the exception of a few things and possibly one of the biggest disappointments in my entire life, was probably one of the greatest E3's I have ever witnessed. Holy shit. So many games, so many things people have wanted for years, have been shown off and given certainty that they exist. I'm always terrible at writing introductions for these things, so let's just get down to it.

The first conference wasn't actually Microsoft's, but it was actually Bethesda's. Technically, it wasn't one of the big conferences, but who cares, Bethesda is pretty big to many people anyway. So one of, if not the first thing they popped out, was apparently a remake of Doom. That's cool, I guess. To give credit where credit is due, Doom is sort of the pioneer in the FPS genre, so there's that. I'm not sure if it "needed" a remake (I don't know if there have been any installments between this and the original Doom), but the original Doom is certainly dated as fuck, so it's nice to see this revision of the original. Next thing I remember was Dishonored 2, which looks nice and all. The thing is, I never played the first Dishonored, so I wasn't as hyped as anybody else was, but one thing that kind of irked me was how one of the designers outright says, "We wanted the player to experience simulation rather than scripted events," yet literally the entirety of the trailer was a scripted event. Then again, it's just a trailer, so I shouldn't be so highbrow about it, I just thought it was a little bit silly and ironic.

They also showed some stuff off The Elder Scrolls Online's latest expansion, and once again, I don't see the appeal of it. I love Skyrim, but I can't see how this franchise would translate nicely into an MMO. Most of the environments and models from what I saw felt very samey to me, but I haven't played the game so I don't have a true word in it. Still, doesn't change the fact that I'm not interested in the game. They talked about a couple of other games which I have entirely forgotten, and then they announced that they are jumping on ship with the strategy card game fad and making an Elder Scrolls strategy card game. Sounds cool and all, and a very good idea as I'm sure plenty of their fans are into Magic: The Gathering, but I'll stick with Hearthstone as I'm not that much into those card games.

I still think sometimes that you play as that dog. Also, marvel at all that brown.

So far Bethesda's presentation was fairly lackluster, yes, but then they came out with the big gun, or shall I say, the Fat Man! Granted, they already announced Fallout 4 before this (which would've been almost as hype as the Final Fantasy VII remake announcement), but still they showed off a lot more than what that trailer showed us. I like to joke that the trailer gave me the impression that you play as a dog, since the dog took up like eighty percent of that teaser. So good on Bethesda for choosing to show off many great details about Fallout 4. They started off, though, talking about how "great" the game looks, and that just made me laugh. It may look much better than Fallout 3, but when you are saying this while I'm seeing stiff model animations and just some bad cases of lighting(?) that the characters look like they are standing in front of a green screen, it just could've rubbed me in the wrong way. Not to mention that the colors still, for the most part, look inspired by what dirt would look like if you threw it in a blender.

Still, I smiled through that as what I was seeing about the gameplay was looking a lot like everything I could have hoped for out of this new game. The character creation has evolved beyond sliders to the point where it's so fine tuned you are literally interacting with the flesh and bone of the character's face, like sculpting. The Cadsworth robot has that wonderful charm the robots have had in the past. There is a bit of dialogue between your character and some guy who just randomly shows up to your house to ask you personal questions about yourself, as you've just so happened to have been luckily selected to move your family to a vault. This leads into the stat selection and stuff. It felt kind of bizarre and unnatural, I would've immediately asked what the Hell was going on, but I guess the ignorant bliss was what they were going for.

The other fantastic thing about this new game that stands out in my mind is the crafting system they have. Everything is so intricate and it looks as if there are thousands of possible things you can make. All the useless bullcrap that they'd throw around in the previous games (like toy cars) are now things you can disassemble for parts to make useful stuff with, which is so intuitive it begs the question why they never did this in the first place. Best of all, though, you can create your own house in the game. Even though they showed us the character making a pretty lame shanty house, that was still a pretty awesome new feature to show off. They also showed that you can customize your own power armor too, that's nice. And of course, they showed quite a bit of gameplay, of namely the goofy combat that has always charmed me. You can blow things up with a teddy bear launcher, for example (I'm not sure if this existed in previous games). All in all, bad graphics aside, I'm really excited for this game. It only took them nearly a decade to get to it already.

With that, that was the end of the Bethesda conference, and following was the first of the Big Three: the Microsoft press conference. Oh boy.

One of these is not like the others (Womb Raider)

I have to give credit where credit is due and say that the Microsoft conference was actually very serviceable. They announced that finally, the Xbox One will have backwards compatibility. That's a good step up over the PS4 and all, although in all seriousness that's something these consoles should've had from the start. That aside though, Microsoft also got to present some exclusives that this console desperately needed. They started off with Halo 5, which looks interesting to me. First off, and this is the main thing that interested me, Master Chief for some reason is now a fugitive in the eyes of the Galactic Federation (gonna use Metroid terminology here because idk what they're actually called and I don't think it's the Covenant). I haven't played Halo 4 so that might explain why I don't understand what's going on, but it still interests me a lot. Also I liked a lot of what I simply saw, this Covenant city felt reminiscent of Halo 2 to me, and they had the classic goofy grunts shouting funny lines. In this demo they weren't playing as Master Chief but apparently a Spartan assigned to hunt Chief down. So the campaigns story is split between these two characters and each leads a squad of Spartans. As far as I know about gameplay they said that apparently it supports up to twenty four player co-op(?), so if that's correct and I'm not remembering it incorrectly holy shit that sounds amazing.

Unfortunately the rest of Microsoft's conference was lackluster to me. A few things got my attention, notably the Recore trailer that followed Halo 5. Honestly if it weren't for the authenticating text that this game is made by some of the creators of Metroid Prime I wouldn't be nearly as interested. It's a pretty trailer and all but I have no idea what this game is supposed to be. I'll certainly be keeping my eye on it though. Another non-big name they premiered was Behind Eyes, and my god what a lovely little game that looks. It's coming out for PC too, but the point of these conferences is to wow me with what these companies are choosing to offer for me, and that certainly snagged my attention. Then of course there is Womb Tomb Raider, which is now an Xbone exclusive. That's good for Microsoft I guess. Recore is also an exclusive, so between those two, Halo 5, and the fact that Square is releasing games for the Xbox now, there is actually a possibility now for me to get an Xbone.

The enigmatic ReCore by former Metroid Prime creators.

The rest of the show was incredibly lackluster though. Every game seemed to me a rehash of each other, all being the same old thing, the same games that follow successful Western formulas of their genre, whether they be action gore shooters like Gears 4 or medieval-esque RPG'S like Dragon Age, both of which, I think, are the big names Microsoft dropped as exclusives. I didn't get to Dragon Age, or whatever that last game is that isn't Forza (the big five here are Womb Tomb Raider, Halo, Gears, Forza, and this game I believe to be Dragon Age), but I did get to Gears of War, which not surprisingly is where I decided to stop. But later on I went to see that particular exhibit because I heard the preview had hilariously bad lighting and by god was I satisfied. I know in real life shadows in dark environments are pitch black but my god I get the sense this guy had to rehearse this like five times to know where the hell he was going.

Twitter weighs in on Gears 4

So I dropped the Microsoft conference because I seriously didn't feel like wasting my time with it anymore. I have school to worry about, so why waste my time. However, I will say though that this year instead of making me angry or laugh at Microsoft in scorn I was quite surprised by how well their lineup was put together and if you're a fan of those familiar Xbox action games well the future looks bright for you.

Update: Just received word that Womb Tomb Raider is a timed exclusive, so... even more reason to find that picture stupid.

Fallout 4 Revealed

Finally! And thank God Bethesda has it again. And I hope that's a new engine finally.

The Wolfecraft stuff has been postponed, mostly because I'm lazy, partially because I have a ton of things going on right now. It will be back shortly.