E3 2018 Conferences

It's been a while since E3 and I can finally type about it now. Sadly, while I did have the opportunity to attend E3 as part of press, I had to refuse the chance to do so. But, of course, I caught up to everything online and with that, I bring you my impressions of the press conferences for E3 2018. This will be a very general idea regarding the conferences as a whole. I will get to the games another time.

EA led the event with, in my opinion, a very disappointing conference. The only interesting thing they showed off was a new title called "Sea of Solitude". Their major AAA lineups are great, sure, but uninteresting to me. Anthem, which should have been amazing, did not look as hopeful as I imagined it to be. Apparently it plays well though, so that remains to be seen. What else? Right, a sequel to Unravel and a mobile butcher of Command & Conquer.

Following that is Microsoft who, quite surprisingly, gave a pretty good conference. But this was mostly because they acquired the rights to first reveals of some pretty major things. They showed off Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Ori and the Will of the Wisp, The Awesome Adventure of Captain Spirit, some Kingdom Hearts 3 footage, Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition, more Shadow of the Tomb Raider footage, Devil May Cry 5, Jump Force, Dying Light 2, Just Cause 4, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. The list goes one. They really focused on the games this time around and while they only showed a fraction of the list for their first party lineups, it was still a satisfying conference for all gamers alike. So many reveals!

Bethesda was after Microsoft and while a lot of people enjoyed Fallout 76, the announcement of Elder Scrolls VI and their new IP, I was never a big fan of all that. I'm not a fan of Bethesda and I felt like the conference was made only for their fans. A circle jerk if you will. It was always the case with every Bethesda conference. I get it but I'm not a fan. They did show an incredible trailer for Skyrim being played on Amazon's Alexa though. That was hilarious.

Ah, Square Enix. They basically showed off some Shadow of the Tomb Raider gameplay and a bunch of other stuff we've already seen. Their conference's presence was so irrelevant that I had no idea why they bothered hyping anything up at all. They could have just uploaded it to YouTube and the reaction would have been much better.

Ubisoft! A conference that I both like and dislike. I used to be a big fan of Ubisoft games until, well, I wasn't. But they still afford a luxury that I can appreciate from a distance. They showed off a lot of interesting gameplay footage and the reveal of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (ignoring the leak). Hey, can blame a gamer for enjoying some stunning high definition gameplay footage of games that I won't ever play.

Devolver Digital and PC Gaming Show (assuming they're two separate conferences) did their own thing but in all honesty, I did not pay attention. I only know that there's this new game from Devolver called My Friend Pedro and it looks insanely weird. In both a good and bad way.

On to my favourite: Sony! They showed off great footage for their 4 major hitters (as they promised weeks before) with some new game announcements and new footage for games we already knew were coming. It was definitely not as surprising as their 2016 conference but certainly a well-rounded heavy hitting conference that they'll have to try and match next year.

Finally, E3 wrapped up with Nintendo and well, they revealed Super Smash Bros Ultimate and everyone lost their bananas. Not me though, nope. I don't buy into that. I'm all for the new Fire Emblem: Three Houses. That rubs me the right way. Now, if only I had a Switch....