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.