T w e n t y S i d e d

Our voyage through this orgy of excess and consumerism continues. This entry will cover Square Enix, PC, Devolver Digital, and part of the Ubisoft show. The next entry will wrap everything up. For real this time.

Square Enix – Final Fantasy 7 Remake

On the podcast last week I joked that Square Enix would chop up the original so that Midgar – the starting city in Final Fantasy 7 – would be an entire game all by itself. It turns out the joke’s on me, because that’s what they’re doing for real.

I should make it clear that I’m not one of the hardcare fans of this game. I played it sometime in 2005 or so, when I was in my mid 30s. Most of the fans played it in 1997 when they were teenagers or young adults. It had an enormous impact on them, and so this is a really big deal for those fans. For me, it was something I really liked, but for a lot of people it was a defining moment in their relationship with the hobby.

The new combat looks a lot like other modern JRPG titles. It runs in realtime, you’re free to move around, and you press the attack button to charge up your abilities. It looks fine to me, but I don’t know how it will go over with the fans.

It’s very pretty.

Most of the rest of the Square Enix presentation was a never-ending chain of JRPGs. This isn’t really my genre, so they all kinda blurred together in my mind. Let’s skip all that and jump right to…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2019: Square Enix, PC, Devolver Digital, Uplay+”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I know last time I promised that I would wrap up E3 in a single post, but once again I have underestimated my capacity to overanalyze things. It’s probably going to take me a few entries to process all this content. Today I’m just going to cover the Bethesda show.

This show should more properly be called the “Zenimax Press Event”. Zenimax is the parent company and the true owner of these various properties. I suspect this is a good cop / bad cop type deal. The name Zenimax is used when the company needs to launch another one of its obnoxious bullshit lawsuits where the company is technically in the right legally but deeply in the wrong morally. The Zenimax identity absorbs all the consumer hate, allowing the Bethesda name to sustain the pretense that they’re just a bunch of nice folks who love video games.

It’s hard to criticize the strategy, given how well it’s working so far.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2019: Bethesda’s Press Conference”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I’m not in a position to do full E3 coverage this year with videos and streaming. Instead I’m just going to do a rapid-fire analysis of what I’ve seen so far and what I think is interesting. The Xbox briefing was full of stuff to talk about, so I’m giving it a post of its own.

The Xbox Briefing

I am getting really tired of the standard briefing patter. It’s played out, we’ve heard it all before, and it’s not what we’re here for.

“Video games enable us to realize our greatest dreams by using next gen hardware to allow developers to unleash their creative vision for a shared experience that shows us the true possibilities of what our video game technology has to offer to millions of players around the world that play together and have new experiences where they can express themselves through video games by enabling them to connect with a growing world of video game adventure through the power of interactive shared experiences that show the true creative vision of some of the most passionate developers working in the industry today as they work to bring their creations to life through…”

Ugh. Over time, the information density approaches zero. Eventually you wake from your trance and realize you’ve just watched some dude talk for three minutes to express the idea that “video games are great”.

By all means, share with us why you think your new gizmo is a good idea or what your current focus is, but don’t spend time explaining to the audience of hardcore gamers that video games are good. Stop wasting my time.

All of the press events suffer from a little of this, but I think Microsoft’s show was the worst.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2019: Xbox Briefing”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.