T w e n t y S i d e d

Here we are at the M. Night Shyamalan style twist ending where I profess admiration for a game I’ve always hated. Except, it’s not really a twist. Lots of people have guessed this choice in the comments so I don’t think it’ll be that surprising. But I’m going to  pretend it’s still a mystery because that makes me feel smug and cleverThats what makes this an M. Night Shyamalan twist..

The one thing I noticed about the show this year is that it felt very light on gameplay. I didn’t do a minute-by-minute comparison to E3 2018 or anything, but I felt like I spent a lot of time waiting for gameplay demos that never materialized. Right at the point where I expected the presenter to show us some gameplay, they moved on to the next title.

I don’t know what brought about this sudden focus on cinematic trailers. Maybe publishers feel like the gameplay is familiar enough that we don’t need to see it every year. Maybe they think they get more bang for their buck by showing us cinematics rather than gameplay. I give a pass to CD Projekt Red for Cyberpunk 2077 because last year they showed off a full 48 minutes of gameplay and we have a very good idea about what it will be like to play that game. But we’re seeing a lot of these other titles for the first time and I’d like a way to judge if the gameplay looks fun and fluid or stiff and repetitive. This is literally the most important thing about a game, so leaving it out is really frustrating for me as both a consumer and a critic.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2019: The Surprise Twist Ending”

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.

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.