Seems like Apple's off to a good start in 2017. We'll see if they keep this up, they'll need a pretty good year to pass Google and an amazing one to catch up with Nintendo. Still want Nintendo to win. 2nd place Apple is the best Apple.
Battle Royale: The Last Generation Of An SNES-CD Saga
- Thread starter RySenkari
- Start date
Can't tell if this is going to foreshadow another tragedy. Heh.
June 23rd, 1968. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Boca Juniors vs River Plate.
Door 12
There wasn't any terrorist attack, and the causes are, even nowadays, unknown. But from a calm night watching an Argentine classic, 71 people never came back home and 128 went right to a hospital.
The same story that the terrorist attack, but 50 years earlier and with no terrorists.
E3 2017 (Part 1)
Google Keynote - E3 2017
Google's 2017 E3 keynote began with a slick sizzle reel of both Nexus and Android titles, including recently released games such as Expedition and Miraculous Ladybug 2, as well as upcoming releases like Mission: Impossible and Redshift. Following this highlight video, which lasted about 90 seconds, Google's Eric Bright took the stage to discuss the current state of the entire Google ecosystem, including the Nexus and mobile offerings. He stated that since the launch of the Google Nexus five years ago, nearly 90 million devices have been sold, and the Nexus remains one of the most popular gaming platforms in the world. He emphasized that Nexus is the most flexible gaming device ever made, with an enormous amount of options to play, from the Nexus Pro to the original base Nexus to Android compatibility, and he emphasized that the future of the Nexus lies in providing as many ways to play the platform's lineup of amazing games as possible. "Play Anywhere, Play Everywhere" is still the driving philosophy of Google Gaming, and after spending a couple of minutes talking about the many different ways that the Nexus is becoming easier to play than ever, Bright began discussing the game that's been at the center of this philosophy for the last five years of development: Redshift, which will be coming to Nexus and Android on September 1, 2017. Bright invited members of the development team to the stage to explain the game. Redshift will be a Nexus game, but with a major Android component that can be enjoyed either by itself or in conjunction with the base Nexus title. The Android title will be an interactive online multiplayer game in which you can battle creatures generated by the Game Master to gain loot, which can then be kept or given out to other players, either randomly or selectively. The AR functionality allows players to go out into the world and help eradicate the corruption that the Game Master has placed over everything, including real world objects. Google has been working extensively with the mobile gaming company Niantic to develop Redshift's Android AR features, and the game will keep track of every single player, generating a massive world map that will create challenges and creatures depending on the real world geography nearby. The Nexus game is a full-fledged RPG that can be played either in single player mode or can be played online, either with a few friends or with the entire network. The game will be an action RPG title, and gameplay looks to be a mix of Diablo and Bayonetta, with loot flying all over the place and the player able to battle enemies with rapid fire attacks, both from ranged weapons and from melee weapons such as swords and axes. Again, the goal is to defeat monsters and end the corruption of the Game Master, and though there is a lengthy (15-25 hours) single player quest that players are encouraged to complete, the real meat of the game will be online, where the Game Master reigns even after he is defeated in the single player quest. Following the Redshift presentation, we got to take a look at Recore, the first Capcom exclusive title for the Google Nexus, developed by Keiji Inafune. Originally envisioned as a Virtua title, back when Capcom still made games exclusively for Apple, development shifted to the Nexus soon after Capcom began working with other companies, as Inafune wanted a game that would push the limits of the Nexus console. We've gotten some information about Recore before, but this is a detailed look at the game's incredible world and story. Recore is very reminiscent of Rare's Dreamers games, and it's quite a thrill to see something like this brought to the Nexus, as the game looks gorgeous on the Nexus Pro. The game is a sci-fi adventure title starring a young woman named Joule who must explore a desolate world and battle dangerous robots to make the world safe for humanity. It's beautiful and full of some amazing weaponry and gadgets, and Joule herself packs quite the punch, with the game's combat fluid and intuitive. Recore looks to be the Nexus' big summer game, it's coming out next month and the full game was available for play at E3. Next up, we got a pair of teasers for upcoming titles. The first teaser featured a classic rock song, "Roundabout" by the band Yes, and showed off some kind of heroine decked out in angelic rocker gear. We didn't see much of this one but it appears to be some kind of cross between an action-RPG and a rhythm game, and is titled Valkyrie. Next looks to be a trailer for a horror game. We got a little more of this one, and it appeared to center on a man who has to rescue a woman from some kind of psychotic humanoid monster. The graphics are incredibly detailed and vivid, maybe the best we've ever seen on a Nexus game, and the trailer had a distinct Resident Evil vibe to it. The title of this game is The Whisper In The Trees, and we were given a 2018 release window for this game.
Next up was a full feature on the upcoming Mission: Impossible game that we first got some teases of in 2016 at PAX East. This one is a Nexus exclusive, and it's a full fledged FPS title based on the classic spy franchise. The game blends the lore of both the hit film franchise and the classic television show, and features Ethan Hunt, the protagonist from the films, as the main playable character. We've already seen plenty of gameplay footage from this one, which is VERY comparable to titles such as Goldeneye and the Velvet Dark franchise, but adds a significant melee component to its FPS combat, where the camera will pan out to a third person view when a player engages an enemy in fisticuffs. The featurette showed off plenty of the game's "stunt" feature, in which the player can perform spectacular, death defying moves to gain an edge in combat or complete missions in unorthodox ways, and of course, there's also a complex multiplayer mode, in which up to 32 players can battle one another in a variety of modes from deathmatches to spy missions. We also got a look at the game's Android tie-in app, in which players can complete various mini-missions for an advantage in the main game, and can battle other players in spying and hacking minigames to gain an advantage in certain multiplayer modes. This is shaping up to be one of the year's biggest and best FPS titles, even if a lot of the gameplay looks to be hearkening back to old school FPSes. We're excited to play what could be one of the Nexus' best games of the year, and it's coming in August. Next up, a teaser for the new Techno Angel game, Techno Angel: Ordained. The crowd was quite excited about this one, which looked like a darker turn on the series, and featured none of the prior protagonists, but instead looks to feature a brand new character: a young woman who gets a battle mech from a mysterious organization and looks to be a hired assassin for them. What little we saw of gameplay looked stunningly gorgeous, even moreso than Techni Angel: Sabine, and this one is also coming next year. We then got a full trailer for Cuphead, a digital Nexus exclusive featuring old-style cartoon graphics and blisteringly difficult bullet hell gameplay. We loved this one when it was first announced earlier this year, and it's not too far away: it's coming in August. Then, we got a trailer for the upcoming Miraculous Ladybug In Tokyo DLC for Miraculous Ladybug 2, coming on the heels of the New York DLC released last month. It's another major expansion for the game that introduces new Miraculous transformations for Luka and Kagami, along with a brand new villain. It looks like plenty of fun, and Ladybug fans are sure to love it when it's released in October. The next trailer focused on another indie digital exclusive for the Nexus: A Hat In Time. This whimsical looking 3-D platformer looks like plenty of fun as well, and could be the best in the genre since Super Mario Adventure. It's coming later this year.
Next, we got to see a video introducing Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering. However, he wasn't here to talk Magic. Instead, he's the lead designer of a new game coming exclusively to the Nexus next year that combines the mechanics of collectible card games with those of an open world action-RPG. Called Full Deck, the game will have players collecting cards and then using them to explore and battle a vast world full of magic and mystery, encountering rivals with decks of their own, and even gaining the ability to create their own cards with components they find. The game will have an extensive Android component as well, and is headed to the Nexus sometime next year. The next feature was a segment on the action/horror title Devoid, which was introduced at last year's E3. We got to see a little more of the game at PAX East later that year, and got our first glimpse of the gameplay, in which a lone hero must battle massive, mutated creatures on a parallel Earth, but now we're getting to see a lot more of the game in all its glory, and more of the enormous monsters that will be the centerpiece of the game's incredible action. Boss battles in Devoid are going to be white-knuckle affairs in which the player's smarts and reflexes will be put to the test, and a lot of the time, it'll be all you can do to just run and hide. The game's protagonist, an outmatched scientist named Landen who evokes memories of Half-Life's Gordon Freeman (though unlike Gordon Freeman, Landen does talk), can gather components to craft weaponry and traps, which he'll need to take the enormous beasts down as he scours the world for his partner Kaia and a way back home. Devoid looks like a game capable of pushing the Nexus to its absolute limits, and the presentation ended with a trailer in which we got to see some incredible glimpses of the destruction that's been wreaked on this parallel world, and at the very end of the trailer, we got to hear Kaia's voice, confirming that she's alive, though she seemed to be in dire straits as the trailer ended. Devoid is looking like one of the Nexus' major tentpole games of 2018, and the trailer looked to be a good note to end the presentation on... only for Eric Bright to hit us with the familiar "one more thing" we're used to hearing from these types of presentations. It's a new Bioware game, and it's called Benefactors. It's an FPS/RPG that takes place on a distant world, and will allow the player to choose from one of several humanoid races as they battle creatures known as the Arcane. The game looks amazing, with graphics better than anything the Nexus Pro is capable of (though we suspect the trailer is using PC footage, as we later learned the game will be coming to the PC, Reality, and Virtua as well). At the end of the game's introduction video, we got the cryptic words "Coming To Google in 2018". Like the World Of Warcraft reveal last year, the trailer doesn't say "Coming To Nexus", it just says "Coming To Google", but Bright didn't elaborate on that, as the Benefactors video ended the presentation.
Google's 2017 keynote was much like last year's, with a bit more mystery. Google is still pushing the Nexus hard, but seems to be gravitating more and more to gaming experiences outside the Nexus, with nearly every major game having some kind of Android component to it as well. As the lines blur between console gaming and mobile gaming, Google seems to be building to something, but this presentation gave no clue as to what that something is. As for the games themselves, Devoid looks incredible, and we also really want to see more of Valkyrie. It was a bit strange for Bioware to introduce its next game at Google's keynote rather than their own presentation. Speculation over a potential Nexus/Steam collaboration was circulating after the trailer, but mum's the word from pretty much everyone, and all we have to go on are rumors as we await Apple and Nintendo's presentations.
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Mari Takahashi: We're back with more GameTV live E3 2017 coverage, and right now we're talking to Barbara Dunkleman, head of community engagement at Google Gaming! And I have to say, that was a really fun presentation, especially Redshift, I can definitely see there's going to be a heck of a lot of multiplayer features in that game and I'm wondering if you can go into any more detail about those features for me?
Barbara Dunkleman: Oh, absolutely! In fact, I'd like to pull up Redshift and we can play together a little bit so you can see all the cool stuff we've got planned for this game, and I'm also going to talk about some of what Google's got planned for multiplayer gaming in the future.
Mari: Fun!
*The two begin playing Redshift together, with Mari playing on the Nexus Pro and Barbara playing on her phone.*
Mari: So right off the bat, this is cool, we can play together.
Dunkleman: Oh yeah, you can find your friends and party up for some asymmetrical play. Right now you're in an area called Twincrown, and I can find you on my Redshift app and I can play right along with you. So while you're out in the world fighting the Shifted, I'm over here on my phone fighting them in this neat little shooting game, and you'll be able to see what I'm doing on your screen.
Mari: That's nice! You're taking them out, I'm not even having to do anything!
Dunkleman: I can't kill 'em all, you'd better start fighting back!
*Mari starts fighting the Shifted with her own character, the gameplay is fairly similar to OTL's Astral Chain, with Platinum Games-esque combat punctuated with damage numbers and slick futuristic visuals. As Barbara blasts the Shifted on her phone, loot starts popping up for Mari's character to grab.*
Mari: Wow, I think I just got a sweet sword from you!
Dunkleman: Yeah, if we coordinate an attack, some higher level loot will drop. We can signal each other, or we can even talk to each other if we both have a headset.
Mari: That's really wild that you can play with me even if you don't have a Nexus. Is this a free app?
Dunkleman: The app is totally free!
Mari: That's incredible, and you can contact your friends and help them out on their game!
Dunkleman: We're trying to create more experiences like this for our games, all of our big games going forward we're going to try to have some kind of Android component to it, absolutely.
*The two continue to play until Mari comes up against a boss creature, a large crab-like monster with a crown on its head, it's doing massive damage and Mari is barely able to do anything to it at all.*
Dunkleman: I'm gonna shoot off the crown, you just need to aim and shoot at the same time as me, then we'll blast it off together! This is a Crowned Enemy, these monsters can be taken down a LOT easier by phone and console players teaming up.
*The two coordinate their attack and blast off the crown.*
Mari: That's really sweet, and now I'm doing tons of damage!
Dunkleman: You're kicking its ass!
Mari: What if, you know, I don't have anyone to play with, anyone to coordinate with?
Dunkleman: That's okay, you can actually ask for help from an online player with an item, and then you'll be able to get help from a random player! People can go on their phone and play, and as they play, they can choose to help someone random, and if they do help them, they'll gain an item on their phone app that they can use on the app or cash in in the console game. So it definitely benefits to be helpful.
Mari: You guys thought of everything.
Dunkleman: Well, sometimes it pays to lend a hand. *holds up her phone and taps on it with her fingers, then holds up her hand and wiggles her fingers* Right? Lend a hand?
Mari: *groans*
*After a minute more with the game, the two get to talking more about Google's online features in general, especially going forward.*
Dunkleman: So going forward, we're going to be pushing AR really heavily, and pushing the Nexus ecosystem onto as many devices as we possibly can. We want to put the Nexus in as many hands as possible, and that doesn't always mean pushing consoles. Augmented reality is a big part of our plans going forward.
Mari: Can you say anything about Project Glass, or is that-
Dunkleman: That's not my department, sorry. *laughing* But I will say that just Android phones will be used in so many different ways, both to play Nexus games and to experience Nexus games better. We also want to build communities of people who can find each other through Nexus games, so that if you're just messing around on your phone in an app, you can see that "oh, there's 12 people playing this game in my neighborhood, maybe we can party up or something".
Mari: Integrating community features into Nexus games in more ways than just people gathering to play games together.
Dunkleman: Exactly. We are creating the first console ecosystem that is going to be in every part of your digital life, and I think, going forward, that's going to be the big thing that's going to draw people to Google and to our games. The future is that you'll be playing games on more and more things, and we want you to play our games, and here are all these reasons why you should be playing our games. They're great games, they deserve to be played, and we want to make it as easy to play them as possible.
Mari: It's easy to play them when they're this good. Redshift looks awesome, you guys have a lot of good stuff coming, thanks for talking with me today.
Dunkleman: Absolutely!
-from GameTV's live E3 2017 streaming event on June 11, 2017
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Austin Watson: We've got another treat for you today, here streaming live from E3, this next interview is with a total badass, he's climbed Mount Everest and now he's in charge of making Rockstar's next great video game, we're here with Dean Hall, project manager of the upcoming Doggerland, and we just got to see some amazing footage from this upcoming game.
Dean Hall: Thanks for stopping by.
Bryce Papenbrook: Hey, thanks for talking with us today.
Austin: What's the story behind Doggerland?
Hall: It's based on some of my own wilderness survival experiences, having to forage for plants and food in the woods during military training, it was terribly rough and I wanted to give some of that sense of desperation to the player. Rockstar actually brought me on board a few years back to help with the survival aspects of the game and as development went on, they ended up giving me and my team more and more responsibility.
Bryce: We're hearing a lot of people comparing this game to Acclaim's upcoming game The Gatherer, and I really think it's that survival component that separates the two games from one another.
Hall: That's a big reason Rockstar brought me on, they had this idea for a game that at the time was just "Grand Theft Auto with cavemen", and it was too much like what Eidos at the time had going on with their "Virgin Earth" game, so my team was brought on to help differentiate it from both their Grand Theft Auto games and from what Eidos was developing.
Austin: Yeah, it's definitely not Grand Theft Auto now. It's just as fun, but now it's so much more engaging and it really sucks you in.
Bryce: I gotta say, when I was having to scrounge around to build my base, and that rival tribe was closing in, my adrenaline was pumping.
*Footage from an early game segment in which the player needs to build up their shelter to protect their tribe from their rivals is shown, the graphics look great and the player character is seen gathering up lots of resources and killing animals for leather as a computer-controlled ally builds something some distance away.*
Hall: I wanted to give the player a keen sense of open world sandbox exploration, but also plenty to do, not just wandering around but actually exploring with a purpose, with few empty moments of gameplay. There's always something, whether it's discovering a new tribe and trying to figure out whether to negotiate or fight, discovering a new plant species to use to make medicine, or building up your relationship with fellow tribemates, there's a ton of missions to do as well, so you'll be able to explore every corner of the map eventually if that's what you choose to do.
Austin: Then there's the online, and I'm really looking forward to the online.
Hall: Oh yeah, we spent a lot of time balancing and tweaking the online. It's a real survival of the fittest, for sure.
Austin: The PvE is incredible, too. I love how you can be fighting with a group of other players, then this big creature shows up and you all have to work together to fight it, or you can just shove somebody down and run and hope the creature goes after them and not you.
Hall: We spent so much time making sure that everything that worked in the single player game also worked in the online game. We don't want the two experiences to be that much different, we want the skills gained from the single player game to carry over into online, while also providing unique experiences for online players. There are going to be some truly amazing settlements and creations that pop up in the online mode. Already, just here at E3, I'm seeing so many creative things being done. We're not done yet, but we'll definitely keep some of the feedback we've gotten here in mind.
Bryce: So it's going to get better?
Hall: It's going to get a lot better, we're still a year out from release. We have a ways to go. I'm already getting a ton of ideas.
Bryce: I can't wait!
-from GameTV's live E3 2017 streaming event on June 12, 2017
Google's 2017 E3 keynote began with a slick sizzle reel of both Nexus and Android titles, including recently released games such as Expedition and Miraculous Ladybug 2, as well as upcoming releases like Mission: Impossible and Redshift. Following this highlight video, which lasted about 90 seconds, Google's Eric Bright took the stage to discuss the current state of the entire Google ecosystem, including the Nexus and mobile offerings. He stated that since the launch of the Google Nexus five years ago, nearly 90 million devices have been sold, and the Nexus remains one of the most popular gaming platforms in the world. He emphasized that Nexus is the most flexible gaming device ever made, with an enormous amount of options to play, from the Nexus Pro to the original base Nexus to Android compatibility, and he emphasized that the future of the Nexus lies in providing as many ways to play the platform's lineup of amazing games as possible. "Play Anywhere, Play Everywhere" is still the driving philosophy of Google Gaming, and after spending a couple of minutes talking about the many different ways that the Nexus is becoming easier to play than ever, Bright began discussing the game that's been at the center of this philosophy for the last five years of development: Redshift, which will be coming to Nexus and Android on September 1, 2017. Bright invited members of the development team to the stage to explain the game. Redshift will be a Nexus game, but with a major Android component that can be enjoyed either by itself or in conjunction with the base Nexus title. The Android title will be an interactive online multiplayer game in which you can battle creatures generated by the Game Master to gain loot, which can then be kept or given out to other players, either randomly or selectively. The AR functionality allows players to go out into the world and help eradicate the corruption that the Game Master has placed over everything, including real world objects. Google has been working extensively with the mobile gaming company Niantic to develop Redshift's Android AR features, and the game will keep track of every single player, generating a massive world map that will create challenges and creatures depending on the real world geography nearby. The Nexus game is a full-fledged RPG that can be played either in single player mode or can be played online, either with a few friends or with the entire network. The game will be an action RPG title, and gameplay looks to be a mix of Diablo and Bayonetta, with loot flying all over the place and the player able to battle enemies with rapid fire attacks, both from ranged weapons and from melee weapons such as swords and axes. Again, the goal is to defeat monsters and end the corruption of the Game Master, and though there is a lengthy (15-25 hours) single player quest that players are encouraged to complete, the real meat of the game will be online, where the Game Master reigns even after he is defeated in the single player quest. Following the Redshift presentation, we got to take a look at Recore, the first Capcom exclusive title for the Google Nexus, developed by Keiji Inafune. Originally envisioned as a Virtua title, back when Capcom still made games exclusively for Apple, development shifted to the Nexus soon after Capcom began working with other companies, as Inafune wanted a game that would push the limits of the Nexus console. We've gotten some information about Recore before, but this is a detailed look at the game's incredible world and story. Recore is very reminiscent of Rare's Dreamers games, and it's quite a thrill to see something like this brought to the Nexus, as the game looks gorgeous on the Nexus Pro. The game is a sci-fi adventure title starring a young woman named Joule who must explore a desolate world and battle dangerous robots to make the world safe for humanity. It's beautiful and full of some amazing weaponry and gadgets, and Joule herself packs quite the punch, with the game's combat fluid and intuitive. Recore looks to be the Nexus' big summer game, it's coming out next month and the full game was available for play at E3. Next up, we got a pair of teasers for upcoming titles. The first teaser featured a classic rock song, "Roundabout" by the band Yes, and showed off some kind of heroine decked out in angelic rocker gear. We didn't see much of this one but it appears to be some kind of cross between an action-RPG and a rhythm game, and is titled Valkyrie. Next looks to be a trailer for a horror game. We got a little more of this one, and it appeared to center on a man who has to rescue a woman from some kind of psychotic humanoid monster. The graphics are incredibly detailed and vivid, maybe the best we've ever seen on a Nexus game, and the trailer had a distinct Resident Evil vibe to it. The title of this game is The Whisper In The Trees, and we were given a 2018 release window for this game.
Next up was a full feature on the upcoming Mission: Impossible game that we first got some teases of in 2016 at PAX East. This one is a Nexus exclusive, and it's a full fledged FPS title based on the classic spy franchise. The game blends the lore of both the hit film franchise and the classic television show, and features Ethan Hunt, the protagonist from the films, as the main playable character. We've already seen plenty of gameplay footage from this one, which is VERY comparable to titles such as Goldeneye and the Velvet Dark franchise, but adds a significant melee component to its FPS combat, where the camera will pan out to a third person view when a player engages an enemy in fisticuffs. The featurette showed off plenty of the game's "stunt" feature, in which the player can perform spectacular, death defying moves to gain an edge in combat or complete missions in unorthodox ways, and of course, there's also a complex multiplayer mode, in which up to 32 players can battle one another in a variety of modes from deathmatches to spy missions. We also got a look at the game's Android tie-in app, in which players can complete various mini-missions for an advantage in the main game, and can battle other players in spying and hacking minigames to gain an advantage in certain multiplayer modes. This is shaping up to be one of the year's biggest and best FPS titles, even if a lot of the gameplay looks to be hearkening back to old school FPSes. We're excited to play what could be one of the Nexus' best games of the year, and it's coming in August. Next up, a teaser for the new Techno Angel game, Techno Angel: Ordained. The crowd was quite excited about this one, which looked like a darker turn on the series, and featured none of the prior protagonists, but instead looks to feature a brand new character: a young woman who gets a battle mech from a mysterious organization and looks to be a hired assassin for them. What little we saw of gameplay looked stunningly gorgeous, even moreso than Techni Angel: Sabine, and this one is also coming next year. We then got a full trailer for Cuphead, a digital Nexus exclusive featuring old-style cartoon graphics and blisteringly difficult bullet hell gameplay. We loved this one when it was first announced earlier this year, and it's not too far away: it's coming in August. Then, we got a trailer for the upcoming Miraculous Ladybug In Tokyo DLC for Miraculous Ladybug 2, coming on the heels of the New York DLC released last month. It's another major expansion for the game that introduces new Miraculous transformations for Luka and Kagami, along with a brand new villain. It looks like plenty of fun, and Ladybug fans are sure to love it when it's released in October. The next trailer focused on another indie digital exclusive for the Nexus: A Hat In Time. This whimsical looking 3-D platformer looks like plenty of fun as well, and could be the best in the genre since Super Mario Adventure. It's coming later this year.
Next, we got to see a video introducing Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering. However, he wasn't here to talk Magic. Instead, he's the lead designer of a new game coming exclusively to the Nexus next year that combines the mechanics of collectible card games with those of an open world action-RPG. Called Full Deck, the game will have players collecting cards and then using them to explore and battle a vast world full of magic and mystery, encountering rivals with decks of their own, and even gaining the ability to create their own cards with components they find. The game will have an extensive Android component as well, and is headed to the Nexus sometime next year. The next feature was a segment on the action/horror title Devoid, which was introduced at last year's E3. We got to see a little more of the game at PAX East later that year, and got our first glimpse of the gameplay, in which a lone hero must battle massive, mutated creatures on a parallel Earth, but now we're getting to see a lot more of the game in all its glory, and more of the enormous monsters that will be the centerpiece of the game's incredible action. Boss battles in Devoid are going to be white-knuckle affairs in which the player's smarts and reflexes will be put to the test, and a lot of the time, it'll be all you can do to just run and hide. The game's protagonist, an outmatched scientist named Landen who evokes memories of Half-Life's Gordon Freeman (though unlike Gordon Freeman, Landen does talk), can gather components to craft weaponry and traps, which he'll need to take the enormous beasts down as he scours the world for his partner Kaia and a way back home. Devoid looks like a game capable of pushing the Nexus to its absolute limits, and the presentation ended with a trailer in which we got to see some incredible glimpses of the destruction that's been wreaked on this parallel world, and at the very end of the trailer, we got to hear Kaia's voice, confirming that she's alive, though she seemed to be in dire straits as the trailer ended. Devoid is looking like one of the Nexus' major tentpole games of 2018, and the trailer looked to be a good note to end the presentation on... only for Eric Bright to hit us with the familiar "one more thing" we're used to hearing from these types of presentations. It's a new Bioware game, and it's called Benefactors. It's an FPS/RPG that takes place on a distant world, and will allow the player to choose from one of several humanoid races as they battle creatures known as the Arcane. The game looks amazing, with graphics better than anything the Nexus Pro is capable of (though we suspect the trailer is using PC footage, as we later learned the game will be coming to the PC, Reality, and Virtua as well). At the end of the game's introduction video, we got the cryptic words "Coming To Google in 2018". Like the World Of Warcraft reveal last year, the trailer doesn't say "Coming To Nexus", it just says "Coming To Google", but Bright didn't elaborate on that, as the Benefactors video ended the presentation.
Google's 2017 keynote was much like last year's, with a bit more mystery. Google is still pushing the Nexus hard, but seems to be gravitating more and more to gaming experiences outside the Nexus, with nearly every major game having some kind of Android component to it as well. As the lines blur between console gaming and mobile gaming, Google seems to be building to something, but this presentation gave no clue as to what that something is. As for the games themselves, Devoid looks incredible, and we also really want to see more of Valkyrie. It was a bit strange for Bioware to introduce its next game at Google's keynote rather than their own presentation. Speculation over a potential Nexus/Steam collaboration was circulating after the trailer, but mum's the word from pretty much everyone, and all we have to go on are rumors as we await Apple and Nintendo's presentations.
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Mari Takahashi: We're back with more GameTV live E3 2017 coverage, and right now we're talking to Barbara Dunkleman, head of community engagement at Google Gaming! And I have to say, that was a really fun presentation, especially Redshift, I can definitely see there's going to be a heck of a lot of multiplayer features in that game and I'm wondering if you can go into any more detail about those features for me?
Barbara Dunkleman: Oh, absolutely! In fact, I'd like to pull up Redshift and we can play together a little bit so you can see all the cool stuff we've got planned for this game, and I'm also going to talk about some of what Google's got planned for multiplayer gaming in the future.
Mari: Fun!
*The two begin playing Redshift together, with Mari playing on the Nexus Pro and Barbara playing on her phone.*
Mari: So right off the bat, this is cool, we can play together.
Dunkleman: Oh yeah, you can find your friends and party up for some asymmetrical play. Right now you're in an area called Twincrown, and I can find you on my Redshift app and I can play right along with you. So while you're out in the world fighting the Shifted, I'm over here on my phone fighting them in this neat little shooting game, and you'll be able to see what I'm doing on your screen.
Mari: That's nice! You're taking them out, I'm not even having to do anything!
Dunkleman: I can't kill 'em all, you'd better start fighting back!
*Mari starts fighting the Shifted with her own character, the gameplay is fairly similar to OTL's Astral Chain, with Platinum Games-esque combat punctuated with damage numbers and slick futuristic visuals. As Barbara blasts the Shifted on her phone, loot starts popping up for Mari's character to grab.*
Mari: Wow, I think I just got a sweet sword from you!
Dunkleman: Yeah, if we coordinate an attack, some higher level loot will drop. We can signal each other, or we can even talk to each other if we both have a headset.
Mari: That's really wild that you can play with me even if you don't have a Nexus. Is this a free app?
Dunkleman: The app is totally free!
Mari: That's incredible, and you can contact your friends and help them out on their game!
Dunkleman: We're trying to create more experiences like this for our games, all of our big games going forward we're going to try to have some kind of Android component to it, absolutely.
*The two continue to play until Mari comes up against a boss creature, a large crab-like monster with a crown on its head, it's doing massive damage and Mari is barely able to do anything to it at all.*
Dunkleman: I'm gonna shoot off the crown, you just need to aim and shoot at the same time as me, then we'll blast it off together! This is a Crowned Enemy, these monsters can be taken down a LOT easier by phone and console players teaming up.
*The two coordinate their attack and blast off the crown.*
Mari: That's really sweet, and now I'm doing tons of damage!
Dunkleman: You're kicking its ass!
Mari: What if, you know, I don't have anyone to play with, anyone to coordinate with?
Dunkleman: That's okay, you can actually ask for help from an online player with an item, and then you'll be able to get help from a random player! People can go on their phone and play, and as they play, they can choose to help someone random, and if they do help them, they'll gain an item on their phone app that they can use on the app or cash in in the console game. So it definitely benefits to be helpful.
Mari: You guys thought of everything.
Dunkleman: Well, sometimes it pays to lend a hand. *holds up her phone and taps on it with her fingers, then holds up her hand and wiggles her fingers* Right? Lend a hand?
Mari: *groans*
*After a minute more with the game, the two get to talking more about Google's online features in general, especially going forward.*
Dunkleman: So going forward, we're going to be pushing AR really heavily, and pushing the Nexus ecosystem onto as many devices as we possibly can. We want to put the Nexus in as many hands as possible, and that doesn't always mean pushing consoles. Augmented reality is a big part of our plans going forward.
Mari: Can you say anything about Project Glass, or is that-
Dunkleman: That's not my department, sorry. *laughing* But I will say that just Android phones will be used in so many different ways, both to play Nexus games and to experience Nexus games better. We also want to build communities of people who can find each other through Nexus games, so that if you're just messing around on your phone in an app, you can see that "oh, there's 12 people playing this game in my neighborhood, maybe we can party up or something".
Mari: Integrating community features into Nexus games in more ways than just people gathering to play games together.
Dunkleman: Exactly. We are creating the first console ecosystem that is going to be in every part of your digital life, and I think, going forward, that's going to be the big thing that's going to draw people to Google and to our games. The future is that you'll be playing games on more and more things, and we want you to play our games, and here are all these reasons why you should be playing our games. They're great games, they deserve to be played, and we want to make it as easy to play them as possible.
Mari: It's easy to play them when they're this good. Redshift looks awesome, you guys have a lot of good stuff coming, thanks for talking with me today.
Dunkleman: Absolutely!
-from GameTV's live E3 2017 streaming event on June 11, 2017
-
Austin Watson: We've got another treat for you today, here streaming live from E3, this next interview is with a total badass, he's climbed Mount Everest and now he's in charge of making Rockstar's next great video game, we're here with Dean Hall, project manager of the upcoming Doggerland, and we just got to see some amazing footage from this upcoming game.
Dean Hall: Thanks for stopping by.
Bryce Papenbrook: Hey, thanks for talking with us today.
Austin: What's the story behind Doggerland?
Hall: It's based on some of my own wilderness survival experiences, having to forage for plants and food in the woods during military training, it was terribly rough and I wanted to give some of that sense of desperation to the player. Rockstar actually brought me on board a few years back to help with the survival aspects of the game and as development went on, they ended up giving me and my team more and more responsibility.
Bryce: We're hearing a lot of people comparing this game to Acclaim's upcoming game The Gatherer, and I really think it's that survival component that separates the two games from one another.
Hall: That's a big reason Rockstar brought me on, they had this idea for a game that at the time was just "Grand Theft Auto with cavemen", and it was too much like what Eidos at the time had going on with their "Virgin Earth" game, so my team was brought on to help differentiate it from both their Grand Theft Auto games and from what Eidos was developing.
Austin: Yeah, it's definitely not Grand Theft Auto now. It's just as fun, but now it's so much more engaging and it really sucks you in.
Bryce: I gotta say, when I was having to scrounge around to build my base, and that rival tribe was closing in, my adrenaline was pumping.
*Footage from an early game segment in which the player needs to build up their shelter to protect their tribe from their rivals is shown, the graphics look great and the player character is seen gathering up lots of resources and killing animals for leather as a computer-controlled ally builds something some distance away.*
Hall: I wanted to give the player a keen sense of open world sandbox exploration, but also plenty to do, not just wandering around but actually exploring with a purpose, with few empty moments of gameplay. There's always something, whether it's discovering a new tribe and trying to figure out whether to negotiate or fight, discovering a new plant species to use to make medicine, or building up your relationship with fellow tribemates, there's a ton of missions to do as well, so you'll be able to explore every corner of the map eventually if that's what you choose to do.
Austin: Then there's the online, and I'm really looking forward to the online.
Hall: Oh yeah, we spent a lot of time balancing and tweaking the online. It's a real survival of the fittest, for sure.
Austin: The PvE is incredible, too. I love how you can be fighting with a group of other players, then this big creature shows up and you all have to work together to fight it, or you can just shove somebody down and run and hope the creature goes after them and not you.
Hall: We spent so much time making sure that everything that worked in the single player game also worked in the online game. We don't want the two experiences to be that much different, we want the skills gained from the single player game to carry over into online, while also providing unique experiences for online players. There are going to be some truly amazing settlements and creations that pop up in the online mode. Already, just here at E3, I'm seeing so many creative things being done. We're not done yet, but we'll definitely keep some of the feedback we've gotten here in mind.
Bryce: So it's going to get better?
Hall: It's going to get a lot better, we're still a year out from release. We have a ways to go. I'm already getting a ton of ideas.
Bryce: I can't wait!
-from GameTV's live E3 2017 streaming event on June 12, 2017
E3 2017 (Part 2)
Apple Keynote - E3 2017
Apple's keynote begins with a teaser trailer for a brand new game (Author's Note: This teaser trailer was given to us by the reader jolou!).
*This trailer uses some of the lyrics and tune of "La Bohème" by Charles Aznavour, giving it a melancholic, old but still somewhat recent tone. It begins with a look at a fair, people are traveling in it, children are playing, parents are buying their children treats. We can see a young girl, in her early teens with her father and her elder brother navigating through the crowd.*
Let me tell of a time
The less than 20
can’t know about
*The father buys the young girl a toy dog, rubs her hair with his hand. Her brother notices something in the distance as suddenly an alarm goes off.*
Unaware in our youth of the sobering truth
Of the years that came after
*People are running away from an undetermined threat, we can some very unhuman noise, weapons firing everywhere. The girl lets her dog toy fall to the ground. The camera focuses on the toy, we can hear people fleeing with those unhuman noises stronger until we hear only them and no more people, no noise at all. Time passes, the toy is barely recognizable and his surroundings look more and more abandoned. And then we can see a real dog leg crushing the toy.
But as the camera goes back, we can see that this dog is visibly infected by some unknown disease and sounds like those unhuman noises earlier. A shadow is shown over the abandoned and destroyed by the elements fair. We can also see a lot of decomposed bodies and the ground is under 5 cm of water. The dog growls and then an arrow goes straight to its, heavily modified by the disease, head.*
Now and then I return and the memories burn
With a bittersweet aching
I climb the same old stairs
But no-one longer cares
*A very strong looking women (voiced by Jennifer Hale) in her late 40/early 50 with a French braid, tan skin, holding a bow and is walking to the dog, bends down to grab the toy, look at it fondly. She put it in her decrepit bag, looks behind her where a boy, who is smiling at her, arrives, and we can hear her say “Let's go find it”.*
And there’s no-one to greet in the streets where we walked
And the bars where we talked of a world we were making
I stand upon that hill until I drink my fill
Then leave it all behind
*We can see the two main characters of the game walking onto the streets of a long-abandoned city, with ruined buildings, abandoned cars, leaving the ruined fair behind.*
La boheme, La Boheme
Moments of joy, moments of pain
La boheme, La Boheme
Nothing can bring them back again
THE LAST GIFT
2019
Only on Apple Virtua
After the trailer ends, the crowd applauds wildly, and John Carmack is introduced, stepping out and speaking for a moment about the game we just saw. The Last Gift is a postapocalyptic adventure title taking place 40 years in the future. It's been in the works since before the Virtua's initial release, and though much of the game is done, there's still a lot of development time remaining. The game won't be playable at this year's E3, but more will be revealed in the coming months, and Apple hopes to have a full playable build ready for next year's E3. After this teaser trailer, Carmack briefly discusses Apple's accomplishments over the last year, and the success of the Virtua S, the first natively 4K home gaming console which has brought an unprecedented level of interactivity and control to the Virtua's library of games. Virtua titles are now more beautiful and immersive than ever, and perhaps no game exemplifies that more than Bayonetta 3. The next part of Apple's presentation was fully focused on this game, with Hideki Kamiya and his team presenting the game's new features. This includes the ability to control both Bayonetta and Jeanne in combat together via the new "Dual Dancing" system, in which the two can utilize slick combo moves and aid each other in battle. The two can also be controlled by two players, via local or online co-op. We also got to see more of the game's newest character, Lucrezia, an angel tasked with protecting Purgatory and killing Bayonetta. Lucrezia has a mix of sadism and nobility, much like Bayonetta herself, but unlike Bayonetta, Lucrezia doesn't revel in her sins, and instead, seeks to atone for the by shedding demonic blood. The dynamic between Bayonetta, Jeanne, and Lucrezia seems to lie at the core of this game, and while it's not revealed whether or not Lucrezia will join Bayonetta's fight, it seems likely that the two will find common ground somewhere. Bayonetta 3 is more beautiful than ever, a clear progression from the Virtua's launch title Bayonetta 2 in pretty much every way, though it has yet to be seen if the game itself will live up to all the pretty visuals and hype. We had a lot of fun when we got to play at Apple's booth on the show floor later in the week, and we got to see another of the game's major improvements: a skill tree system that allows the player to customize the way Bayonetta and Jeanne battle enemies as they progress through the game. Bayonetta 3 appears to be Apple's major holiday title this year, and it'll drop on November 20, 2017. Next up, Apple's other huge Virtua title of 2017: Sonic Ocean, the latest mainline game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series! As the title implies, Sonic Ocean sees the blue hedgehog and his friends take to the water, as they explore a series of undersea worlds on the mysterious planet of Blue Ocean. Once again, they'll be battling Eggman, who seeks to harvest the planet's ocean for its resources, while they also seek to stop Eggman from awakening an ancient undersea deity known as the Leviathan. While water levels in games have been maligned in the past, Sonic Ocean doesn't seem to fall into many of the same traps those games did. Sonic and friends move through the water with speed and swiftness, barely slowed down as they dive beneath the ocean depths... and of course, Sonic is fast enough to run on the surface of the water, meaning that some levels can be enjoyed without even breaking the sea surface. We got introduced to a pair of new characters, including an otter named Dorri and a somewhat nerdy mole named Mekkler, and both seem to have a crucial role in the game's storyline, which is sure to be an epic one. Sonic Ocean is set to be released on September 19th.
After the presentations for these two big games, we were treated to an appearance from Steve Jobs and some Apple designers and engineers, who discussed all the gaming features of the upcoming iPhone 8 line, including the iPhone 8G, an iPhone specifically tuned for mobile gaming. This isn't the rumored iPhone-like Gemini successor that's been making the rounds on various game news sites, but simply a model of the upcoming next-gen iPhone with gaming at its center, including a new gamepad accessory that's incredibly light and easy to bring with players wherever they go. The iPhone 8G's processor is also devoted to gaming, allowing it to pump out more processing power than the other iPhone models and to avoid overheating, while it's also capable of streaming both Virtua and Gemini games easier than any other iPhone model to date. We were then treated to a sizzle reel of upcoming mobile titles, with many of them exclusive to iOS, including Panzer Dragoon Gloria, a rail shooter/RPG with some gacha mechanics and a detailed storyline, Sonic Racing League, a new Sonic-based kart title, and Fallout: Silicon Valley, a spinoff Fallout title similar to the first two games in the series exclusive to iOS. Over a dozen iOS exclusive mobile titles were shown off here, and while some were clearly mobile games that can run on any old iPhone, others were console quality titles rivaling even what the Gemini can produce, many of which featured the "optimized for iPhone 8G" logo. While most E3 watchers aren't exactly thrilled about new mobile games, Jobs and his development team got plenty of people buzzing, with loud cheers numerous times during the presentation. The iPhone presentation was capped off with a pair of reveals for games coming to both iOS and Gemini: Herzog Zwei: Satellite War was the first of these games. It's a successor to the classic title Herzog Zwei, and the series' third revival, after the 2002 game and 2007's Herzog Tactics. Herzog Zwei: Satellite War is a futuristic title with vivid animations and detailed graphics, and captures the gameplay of the original perfectly, making it an excellent mobile game. The game will have a major online component, with players battling for control of a large world against the other players inhabiting it, though the game will feature a single player mode with dozens of levels. The second reveal was a teaser of a 3-D RPG, somewhat similar to Phantasy Star Online, but taking place in a fantasy world somewhat based on Feudal Japan. The world contains both samurai warriors and ancient ghosts and spirits, and the player becomes a part of that world along with millions of other players. The game's title was revealed as Spiritrealm, and the game's developer touted it as the "ultimate mobile MMORPG", promising a full console-style experience in the palm of your hand. After the reveal for these games, Jobs then promised that Apple would remain a leader in portable gaming for years to come, and took a few jabs at the Nexus and Android before leaving the stage.
The next featurette focused on Panzer Dragoon Aquarius, with the game's development team giving an update on the game's progress. The developers are still extremely hard at work, and we got to see some beautiful snapshots of the world the game takes place in, which is rife with underwater creatures and landscapes. Panzer Dragoon Aquarius will be more of a straight-up rail shooter than the previous two games in the series, taking the series back to its roots and having players fly their dragon in combat against some truly impressive creatures, with the centerpiece being a massive winged creature seemingly miles long. The visuals of Aquarius are utterly spectacular, and the game's protagonist, a young man named Pikon, seems to be the son of a sea goddess and a mortal man, who must reclaim his mother's proper place in the sea after his realm is overrun by a powerful corporation seeking to exploit the world's ocean for their own purposes. We noted some of the similarities between the plot of Sonic Ocean and Panzer Dragoon Aquarius, though the similarities between their stories seem to be coincidental. All worries of unoriginal plots aside, Panzer Dragoon Aquarius is an absolutely gorgeous game with the potential to make great use of the Virtua's motion controls while also pushing the visual limits of the Virtua-S and being a major reason to buy a 4K TV. Panzer Dragoon Aquarius is scheduled for release sometime in the first quarter of 2018. We next got a full gameplay and storyline trailer for the upcoming Angel May Cry, Capcom's Devil May Cry spinoff game featuring a female protagonist named Beatrix and a storyline featuring a vampire cult. While the game does draw some comparisons to Bayonetta, it looks to be less over the top, with a focus on shooting as opposed to melee. The game is coming to Virtua with some exclusive content, though it'll also be releasing simultaneously on the Reality and Nexus. It'll be coming out in November, a couple weeks before Bayonetta 3. John Carmack then began to speak, and launched into a short speech about how Apple wanted to close E3 with a look at the future of competitive online gaming. This game, still early in development, has been a project that Carmack feels a great kinship with, and that he assisted in the development of this next title. The game itself, which we only got to see about 30 seconds of, looks to combine a gritty, weapon-heavy Doom-esque FPS with MMORPG elements, and goes by the title of Bloodlust. Not since the Arbiter Of Sin series have we seen such an edgy looking IP from Apple or Sega, but the idea of a Doom-like MMORPG is incredibly intriguing, and we're hoping to get more news about this game soon.
-
Christina Grimmie: I'm here with Blizzard's Dustin Browder, lead developer on the upcoming New Orthodoxy, which is one of the hottest games at this year's E3. I've been playing this game for the last 20 minutes, and I'll be honest, I haven't been able to stop! It's a lot of fun, it's really intense, and Dustin, what should players know who are wondering if this game lives up to the hype?
Dustin Browder: I'm glad you asked, Christina. New Orthodoxy has been one of our big projects of the last five years, we've put a ton of time and effort into this game and now we're ready to see it get into the players' hands and we know they're gonna love it. New Orthodoxy blends elements of our great RTS titles like Warcraft and Starcraft with elements of modern shooter games, and it allows players to jump right into these huge battles that are taking place on screen. The Cloak rebellion battling it out with the Clear Mind and their army of Blank soldiers, and it all plays out in real time, there's a huge variety of weapons and things that you can place, and once the battle starts you can leap right down into the action.
Christina: I was getting serious Lyte and Darke vibes as I played. I feel like these Cloaks are a lot like the Shadow Witches, and the Blanks are like the Crusader Knights hunting them down.
Browder: Well, that wasn't quite what we were going for but some of us are fans of the show, so yeah, we did notice some of the similarities.
Christina: What I like most about the game is the heavy strategy involved. You can't just plunk down your guys, you have to really plan ahead, and if you don't and then you go into battle as one of the soldiers, you'll know you messed up. That said, it's also possible to fix things on the ground, which is really cool. Sometimes in the heat of battle, things get messed up, and you just have to take what the game throws at you and fight back, and it does a really good job instilling that bravery and resourcefulness into you. It's definitely not a full-on strategy game like Warcraft, but you can't neglect strategy.
Browder: We really want to encourage players to find different solutions. There's never just one right way to win a battle, and even during playtesting, we're finding things that we never expected people to do.
Christina: I know I loved messing around and experimenting with troop placement, trying to set traps for the enemy, it was a lot of fun. And then there's the RPG element, like XCOM, where you can raise individual soldiers and level them up and deck them out. Fire Emblem comes to mind too, especially with the permadeath in this game, how you can lose guys if you mess up and it's permanent.
Browder: Yeah, we absolutely wanted there to be real consequences to the players' choices. It autosaves too, so there's no going back if you mess up.
Christina: It's an always online game.
Browder: Exactly, even the single player is online, which we know some people will have a problem with but we thought it was best for the game to be constantly online and constantly saving, and it makes it so easy to jump into multiplayer as well.
Christina: I don't have a problem with it, but Austin and Avan were griping! *laughs*
Browder: Well, we understand why people might have a problem with it.
Christina: I'm a modern gamer, I love that these games are always online, bring it on!
(...)
Christina: Here's another strategy game for PC with a lot of hype behind it, it's called Hundred Years, and it's a game about the wars between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries. This is probably one of the deepest strategy games I've ever played, and I could see someone spending hours and hours with this. John Knudsen is a game director at Yodersoft, the developers of the game, and John, what makes this game more different than some of the other really complex strategy games on the market right now, specifically, why should an everyday casual player give this game a try?
John: Well, we've pushed to make all our strategy games as accessible as possible, but we know these games can be really complex, so we've been able to program some really subtle automizations that allow players to customize their experience to their liking. You can automize how your country is run, you can automize troop movements if you like...
Christina: So the game plays itself, at least if you want it to?
John: Not everything, but most aspects of the game can be fully automized, or you can play everything manually as the game was intended to be played, it's entirely up to you.
Christina: I have to be honest, I wasn't into these games so much at first, but once I gave a few of them a chance, I really was able to get into them and find things I really liked, and the thing I really like about Hundred Years is how you can influence the outcome of battles with diplomacy to the point where you can get through large chunks of the game without fighting a single battle. Diplomacy is really important in this game and you have lots of little speech trees and dialogue options to avoid fighting. You can pretty much win wars without going into battle if you want to, the dialogue is really well developed and you guys paid a lot of attention to detail when it came to negotiating and forming friendships.
John: And that's the one part of the game that you can't automize very much of, so if you just wanted Hundred Years to be a diplomacy simulator, that's a perfectly valid thing to do.
Christina: Joan of Arc is in this game, which is awesome. I didn't get to play any segments of the game with her, but you say there are all kinds of options for her?
John: Absolutely, you can assassinate her, you can save her, you can turn her into a villain, or if you just want to re-enact the events of real life, you can do that too.
Christina: How historically accurate is Hundred Years?
John: We try to keep as much accuracy as possible, but there are some fictional events and segments in the game as well. If you have a scholarly knowledge of the Hundred Years' War, you'll be pretty impressed with how much we managed to get right, but you'll probably still send off an angry e-mail or two.
Christina: Ooh, don't you hate those?
(...)
*Christina and Avan Jogia are battling it out in a thrilling deathmatch in a sci-fi FPS taking place largely atop skyscrapers and along high tension wires suspending between them.*
Christina: This is Highwire II: Electric Sky, sequel to 2014's Highwire, which was sort of a cult PC hit back when it was first released. Development studio Antesocial went back to the drawing board, and the result might just be the best PC exclusive of the year.
*Their characters are shooting at one another while leaping from wire to wire, with energy weapons as guns. It's a spectacularly beautiful game, giving off a sort of Tron meets Velvet Dark vibe as Avan racks up multiple kills on Christina and her teammates.*
Avan: The game's main attraction is going to be its online multiplayer mode, but don't sleep on the single player campaign, which had its trailer revealed at a presentation earlier today. You can check out the trailer on the GameTV website, or check out this brief clip.
*The clip shows a man and a woman speaking to one another about their mission, to kill a scientist who's been working with the cyborgs that have been taking over territory held by full humans. They're in some kind of argument, and it's revealed that the scientist is the woman's older brother. She doesn't want to kill him, but she knows he's a cyborg supremacist, and he even cured her paralysis when she was a teenager by developing custom artificial limbs for her. The man and woman are seen perched on a wire above the building where the scientist works, and the clip ends as they leap in through a window.*
Avan: In the Highwire series, humans and cyborgs battle for control of an increasingly crowded and polluted Earth, which becomes more and more inhospitable as resources are mined for cybernetic parts. Humans who refuse to get the parts or who can't afford them are treated with disdain by the cyborgs, and in Highwire II, a group of those cyborgs launch a campaign of enslavement against the remaining fully human people on Earth. Highwire II features stunning visuals and some truly rapidfire action, emphasizing movement like no other shooter game on the market.
Christina: And right now, I can't move fast enough to avoid getting my butt kicked!
Avan: Got you again!
Christina: Noooo!
*Avan's team wins the deathmatch by a considerable margin over Christina's team.*
Avan: The controls are really fluid, and once you get the hang of them, they're pretty much second nature.
Christina: Yeah, even though Avan kept killing me, I never got the sense that it was the game's fault, just Avan's for being a big jerk! *laughs* Highwire II comes out next month, and it'll be available on Steam for PCs only. No word on a console release, but considering that the original Highwire has yet to come to consoles, I doubt this game will make the jump... which is a real shame because the graphics would look amazing through some Reality VR goggles.
Avan: You know, actually, there are some killer new VR goggles coming to PC later this year.
Christina: Really?
Avan: That's right, and we'll send it over to Austin and Mari, who are at the Accelero booth to give our viewers an exclusive preview of their new Enthrall VR gaming headset.
Christina: That's not fair, I want to try it with this game.
Avan: Only Austin and Mari get to try it right now.
Christina: *looks disappointed*
-from GameTV's live E3 2017 streaming event on June 12, 2017
Apple's keynote begins with a teaser trailer for a brand new game (Author's Note: This teaser trailer was given to us by the reader jolou!).
*This trailer uses some of the lyrics and tune of "La Bohème" by Charles Aznavour, giving it a melancholic, old but still somewhat recent tone. It begins with a look at a fair, people are traveling in it, children are playing, parents are buying their children treats. We can see a young girl, in her early teens with her father and her elder brother navigating through the crowd.*
Let me tell of a time
The less than 20
can’t know about
*The father buys the young girl a toy dog, rubs her hair with his hand. Her brother notices something in the distance as suddenly an alarm goes off.*
Unaware in our youth of the sobering truth
Of the years that came after
*People are running away from an undetermined threat, we can some very unhuman noise, weapons firing everywhere. The girl lets her dog toy fall to the ground. The camera focuses on the toy, we can hear people fleeing with those unhuman noises stronger until we hear only them and no more people, no noise at all. Time passes, the toy is barely recognizable and his surroundings look more and more abandoned. And then we can see a real dog leg crushing the toy.
But as the camera goes back, we can see that this dog is visibly infected by some unknown disease and sounds like those unhuman noises earlier. A shadow is shown over the abandoned and destroyed by the elements fair. We can also see a lot of decomposed bodies and the ground is under 5 cm of water. The dog growls and then an arrow goes straight to its, heavily modified by the disease, head.*
Now and then I return and the memories burn
With a bittersweet aching
I climb the same old stairs
But no-one longer cares
*A very strong looking women (voiced by Jennifer Hale) in her late 40/early 50 with a French braid, tan skin, holding a bow and is walking to the dog, bends down to grab the toy, look at it fondly. She put it in her decrepit bag, looks behind her where a boy, who is smiling at her, arrives, and we can hear her say “Let's go find it”.*
And there’s no-one to greet in the streets where we walked
And the bars where we talked of a world we were making
I stand upon that hill until I drink my fill
Then leave it all behind
*We can see the two main characters of the game walking onto the streets of a long-abandoned city, with ruined buildings, abandoned cars, leaving the ruined fair behind.*
La boheme, La Boheme
Moments of joy, moments of pain
La boheme, La Boheme
Nothing can bring them back again
THE LAST GIFT
2019
Only on Apple Virtua
After the trailer ends, the crowd applauds wildly, and John Carmack is introduced, stepping out and speaking for a moment about the game we just saw. The Last Gift is a postapocalyptic adventure title taking place 40 years in the future. It's been in the works since before the Virtua's initial release, and though much of the game is done, there's still a lot of development time remaining. The game won't be playable at this year's E3, but more will be revealed in the coming months, and Apple hopes to have a full playable build ready for next year's E3. After this teaser trailer, Carmack briefly discusses Apple's accomplishments over the last year, and the success of the Virtua S, the first natively 4K home gaming console which has brought an unprecedented level of interactivity and control to the Virtua's library of games. Virtua titles are now more beautiful and immersive than ever, and perhaps no game exemplifies that more than Bayonetta 3. The next part of Apple's presentation was fully focused on this game, with Hideki Kamiya and his team presenting the game's new features. This includes the ability to control both Bayonetta and Jeanne in combat together via the new "Dual Dancing" system, in which the two can utilize slick combo moves and aid each other in battle. The two can also be controlled by two players, via local or online co-op. We also got to see more of the game's newest character, Lucrezia, an angel tasked with protecting Purgatory and killing Bayonetta. Lucrezia has a mix of sadism and nobility, much like Bayonetta herself, but unlike Bayonetta, Lucrezia doesn't revel in her sins, and instead, seeks to atone for the by shedding demonic blood. The dynamic between Bayonetta, Jeanne, and Lucrezia seems to lie at the core of this game, and while it's not revealed whether or not Lucrezia will join Bayonetta's fight, it seems likely that the two will find common ground somewhere. Bayonetta 3 is more beautiful than ever, a clear progression from the Virtua's launch title Bayonetta 2 in pretty much every way, though it has yet to be seen if the game itself will live up to all the pretty visuals and hype. We had a lot of fun when we got to play at Apple's booth on the show floor later in the week, and we got to see another of the game's major improvements: a skill tree system that allows the player to customize the way Bayonetta and Jeanne battle enemies as they progress through the game. Bayonetta 3 appears to be Apple's major holiday title this year, and it'll drop on November 20, 2017. Next up, Apple's other huge Virtua title of 2017: Sonic Ocean, the latest mainline game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series! As the title implies, Sonic Ocean sees the blue hedgehog and his friends take to the water, as they explore a series of undersea worlds on the mysterious planet of Blue Ocean. Once again, they'll be battling Eggman, who seeks to harvest the planet's ocean for its resources, while they also seek to stop Eggman from awakening an ancient undersea deity known as the Leviathan. While water levels in games have been maligned in the past, Sonic Ocean doesn't seem to fall into many of the same traps those games did. Sonic and friends move through the water with speed and swiftness, barely slowed down as they dive beneath the ocean depths... and of course, Sonic is fast enough to run on the surface of the water, meaning that some levels can be enjoyed without even breaking the sea surface. We got introduced to a pair of new characters, including an otter named Dorri and a somewhat nerdy mole named Mekkler, and both seem to have a crucial role in the game's storyline, which is sure to be an epic one. Sonic Ocean is set to be released on September 19th.
After the presentations for these two big games, we were treated to an appearance from Steve Jobs and some Apple designers and engineers, who discussed all the gaming features of the upcoming iPhone 8 line, including the iPhone 8G, an iPhone specifically tuned for mobile gaming. This isn't the rumored iPhone-like Gemini successor that's been making the rounds on various game news sites, but simply a model of the upcoming next-gen iPhone with gaming at its center, including a new gamepad accessory that's incredibly light and easy to bring with players wherever they go. The iPhone 8G's processor is also devoted to gaming, allowing it to pump out more processing power than the other iPhone models and to avoid overheating, while it's also capable of streaming both Virtua and Gemini games easier than any other iPhone model to date. We were then treated to a sizzle reel of upcoming mobile titles, with many of them exclusive to iOS, including Panzer Dragoon Gloria, a rail shooter/RPG with some gacha mechanics and a detailed storyline, Sonic Racing League, a new Sonic-based kart title, and Fallout: Silicon Valley, a spinoff Fallout title similar to the first two games in the series exclusive to iOS. Over a dozen iOS exclusive mobile titles were shown off here, and while some were clearly mobile games that can run on any old iPhone, others were console quality titles rivaling even what the Gemini can produce, many of which featured the "optimized for iPhone 8G" logo. While most E3 watchers aren't exactly thrilled about new mobile games, Jobs and his development team got plenty of people buzzing, with loud cheers numerous times during the presentation. The iPhone presentation was capped off with a pair of reveals for games coming to both iOS and Gemini: Herzog Zwei: Satellite War was the first of these games. It's a successor to the classic title Herzog Zwei, and the series' third revival, after the 2002 game and 2007's Herzog Tactics. Herzog Zwei: Satellite War is a futuristic title with vivid animations and detailed graphics, and captures the gameplay of the original perfectly, making it an excellent mobile game. The game will have a major online component, with players battling for control of a large world against the other players inhabiting it, though the game will feature a single player mode with dozens of levels. The second reveal was a teaser of a 3-D RPG, somewhat similar to Phantasy Star Online, but taking place in a fantasy world somewhat based on Feudal Japan. The world contains both samurai warriors and ancient ghosts and spirits, and the player becomes a part of that world along with millions of other players. The game's title was revealed as Spiritrealm, and the game's developer touted it as the "ultimate mobile MMORPG", promising a full console-style experience in the palm of your hand. After the reveal for these games, Jobs then promised that Apple would remain a leader in portable gaming for years to come, and took a few jabs at the Nexus and Android before leaving the stage.
The next featurette focused on Panzer Dragoon Aquarius, with the game's development team giving an update on the game's progress. The developers are still extremely hard at work, and we got to see some beautiful snapshots of the world the game takes place in, which is rife with underwater creatures and landscapes. Panzer Dragoon Aquarius will be more of a straight-up rail shooter than the previous two games in the series, taking the series back to its roots and having players fly their dragon in combat against some truly impressive creatures, with the centerpiece being a massive winged creature seemingly miles long. The visuals of Aquarius are utterly spectacular, and the game's protagonist, a young man named Pikon, seems to be the son of a sea goddess and a mortal man, who must reclaim his mother's proper place in the sea after his realm is overrun by a powerful corporation seeking to exploit the world's ocean for their own purposes. We noted some of the similarities between the plot of Sonic Ocean and Panzer Dragoon Aquarius, though the similarities between their stories seem to be coincidental. All worries of unoriginal plots aside, Panzer Dragoon Aquarius is an absolutely gorgeous game with the potential to make great use of the Virtua's motion controls while also pushing the visual limits of the Virtua-S and being a major reason to buy a 4K TV. Panzer Dragoon Aquarius is scheduled for release sometime in the first quarter of 2018. We next got a full gameplay and storyline trailer for the upcoming Angel May Cry, Capcom's Devil May Cry spinoff game featuring a female protagonist named Beatrix and a storyline featuring a vampire cult. While the game does draw some comparisons to Bayonetta, it looks to be less over the top, with a focus on shooting as opposed to melee. The game is coming to Virtua with some exclusive content, though it'll also be releasing simultaneously on the Reality and Nexus. It'll be coming out in November, a couple weeks before Bayonetta 3. John Carmack then began to speak, and launched into a short speech about how Apple wanted to close E3 with a look at the future of competitive online gaming. This game, still early in development, has been a project that Carmack feels a great kinship with, and that he assisted in the development of this next title. The game itself, which we only got to see about 30 seconds of, looks to combine a gritty, weapon-heavy Doom-esque FPS with MMORPG elements, and goes by the title of Bloodlust. Not since the Arbiter Of Sin series have we seen such an edgy looking IP from Apple or Sega, but the idea of a Doom-like MMORPG is incredibly intriguing, and we're hoping to get more news about this game soon.
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Christina Grimmie: I'm here with Blizzard's Dustin Browder, lead developer on the upcoming New Orthodoxy, which is one of the hottest games at this year's E3. I've been playing this game for the last 20 minutes, and I'll be honest, I haven't been able to stop! It's a lot of fun, it's really intense, and Dustin, what should players know who are wondering if this game lives up to the hype?
Dustin Browder: I'm glad you asked, Christina. New Orthodoxy has been one of our big projects of the last five years, we've put a ton of time and effort into this game and now we're ready to see it get into the players' hands and we know they're gonna love it. New Orthodoxy blends elements of our great RTS titles like Warcraft and Starcraft with elements of modern shooter games, and it allows players to jump right into these huge battles that are taking place on screen. The Cloak rebellion battling it out with the Clear Mind and their army of Blank soldiers, and it all plays out in real time, there's a huge variety of weapons and things that you can place, and once the battle starts you can leap right down into the action.
Christina: I was getting serious Lyte and Darke vibes as I played. I feel like these Cloaks are a lot like the Shadow Witches, and the Blanks are like the Crusader Knights hunting them down.
Browder: Well, that wasn't quite what we were going for but some of us are fans of the show, so yeah, we did notice some of the similarities.
Christina: What I like most about the game is the heavy strategy involved. You can't just plunk down your guys, you have to really plan ahead, and if you don't and then you go into battle as one of the soldiers, you'll know you messed up. That said, it's also possible to fix things on the ground, which is really cool. Sometimes in the heat of battle, things get messed up, and you just have to take what the game throws at you and fight back, and it does a really good job instilling that bravery and resourcefulness into you. It's definitely not a full-on strategy game like Warcraft, but you can't neglect strategy.
Browder: We really want to encourage players to find different solutions. There's never just one right way to win a battle, and even during playtesting, we're finding things that we never expected people to do.
Christina: I know I loved messing around and experimenting with troop placement, trying to set traps for the enemy, it was a lot of fun. And then there's the RPG element, like XCOM, where you can raise individual soldiers and level them up and deck them out. Fire Emblem comes to mind too, especially with the permadeath in this game, how you can lose guys if you mess up and it's permanent.
Browder: Yeah, we absolutely wanted there to be real consequences to the players' choices. It autosaves too, so there's no going back if you mess up.
Christina: It's an always online game.
Browder: Exactly, even the single player is online, which we know some people will have a problem with but we thought it was best for the game to be constantly online and constantly saving, and it makes it so easy to jump into multiplayer as well.
Christina: I don't have a problem with it, but Austin and Avan were griping! *laughs*
Browder: Well, we understand why people might have a problem with it.
Christina: I'm a modern gamer, I love that these games are always online, bring it on!
(...)
Christina: Here's another strategy game for PC with a lot of hype behind it, it's called Hundred Years, and it's a game about the wars between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries. This is probably one of the deepest strategy games I've ever played, and I could see someone spending hours and hours with this. John Knudsen is a game director at Yodersoft, the developers of the game, and John, what makes this game more different than some of the other really complex strategy games on the market right now, specifically, why should an everyday casual player give this game a try?
John: Well, we've pushed to make all our strategy games as accessible as possible, but we know these games can be really complex, so we've been able to program some really subtle automizations that allow players to customize their experience to their liking. You can automize how your country is run, you can automize troop movements if you like...
Christina: So the game plays itself, at least if you want it to?
John: Not everything, but most aspects of the game can be fully automized, or you can play everything manually as the game was intended to be played, it's entirely up to you.
Christina: I have to be honest, I wasn't into these games so much at first, but once I gave a few of them a chance, I really was able to get into them and find things I really liked, and the thing I really like about Hundred Years is how you can influence the outcome of battles with diplomacy to the point where you can get through large chunks of the game without fighting a single battle. Diplomacy is really important in this game and you have lots of little speech trees and dialogue options to avoid fighting. You can pretty much win wars without going into battle if you want to, the dialogue is really well developed and you guys paid a lot of attention to detail when it came to negotiating and forming friendships.
John: And that's the one part of the game that you can't automize very much of, so if you just wanted Hundred Years to be a diplomacy simulator, that's a perfectly valid thing to do.
Christina: Joan of Arc is in this game, which is awesome. I didn't get to play any segments of the game with her, but you say there are all kinds of options for her?
John: Absolutely, you can assassinate her, you can save her, you can turn her into a villain, or if you just want to re-enact the events of real life, you can do that too.
Christina: How historically accurate is Hundred Years?
John: We try to keep as much accuracy as possible, but there are some fictional events and segments in the game as well. If you have a scholarly knowledge of the Hundred Years' War, you'll be pretty impressed with how much we managed to get right, but you'll probably still send off an angry e-mail or two.
Christina: Ooh, don't you hate those?
(...)
*Christina and Avan Jogia are battling it out in a thrilling deathmatch in a sci-fi FPS taking place largely atop skyscrapers and along high tension wires suspending between them.*
Christina: This is Highwire II: Electric Sky, sequel to 2014's Highwire, which was sort of a cult PC hit back when it was first released. Development studio Antesocial went back to the drawing board, and the result might just be the best PC exclusive of the year.
*Their characters are shooting at one another while leaping from wire to wire, with energy weapons as guns. It's a spectacularly beautiful game, giving off a sort of Tron meets Velvet Dark vibe as Avan racks up multiple kills on Christina and her teammates.*
Avan: The game's main attraction is going to be its online multiplayer mode, but don't sleep on the single player campaign, which had its trailer revealed at a presentation earlier today. You can check out the trailer on the GameTV website, or check out this brief clip.
*The clip shows a man and a woman speaking to one another about their mission, to kill a scientist who's been working with the cyborgs that have been taking over territory held by full humans. They're in some kind of argument, and it's revealed that the scientist is the woman's older brother. She doesn't want to kill him, but she knows he's a cyborg supremacist, and he even cured her paralysis when she was a teenager by developing custom artificial limbs for her. The man and woman are seen perched on a wire above the building where the scientist works, and the clip ends as they leap in through a window.*
Avan: In the Highwire series, humans and cyborgs battle for control of an increasingly crowded and polluted Earth, which becomes more and more inhospitable as resources are mined for cybernetic parts. Humans who refuse to get the parts or who can't afford them are treated with disdain by the cyborgs, and in Highwire II, a group of those cyborgs launch a campaign of enslavement against the remaining fully human people on Earth. Highwire II features stunning visuals and some truly rapidfire action, emphasizing movement like no other shooter game on the market.
Christina: And right now, I can't move fast enough to avoid getting my butt kicked!
Avan: Got you again!
Christina: Noooo!
*Avan's team wins the deathmatch by a considerable margin over Christina's team.*
Avan: The controls are really fluid, and once you get the hang of them, they're pretty much second nature.
Christina: Yeah, even though Avan kept killing me, I never got the sense that it was the game's fault, just Avan's for being a big jerk! *laughs* Highwire II comes out next month, and it'll be available on Steam for PCs only. No word on a console release, but considering that the original Highwire has yet to come to consoles, I doubt this game will make the jump... which is a real shame because the graphics would look amazing through some Reality VR goggles.
Avan: You know, actually, there are some killer new VR goggles coming to PC later this year.
Christina: Really?
Avan: That's right, and we'll send it over to Austin and Mari, who are at the Accelero booth to give our viewers an exclusive preview of their new Enthrall VR gaming headset.
Christina: That's not fair, I want to try it with this game.
Avan: Only Austin and Mari get to try it right now.
Christina: *looks disappointed*
-from GameTV's live E3 2017 streaming event on June 12, 2017
And here I was hoping to see a dolphin character in a Sonic game.
Well, if nothing else, I know who Luz Noceda's favorite Sonic character is in this particular timeline.
Yeah that was my second choice too, but i felt that La Boheme lyrics there were like if the main character (the woman voiced by Jennifer hale) was speaking (and it's also one of my favorite songs) so i choose that one ^^
Does it sponsor any Videocean stars at some point, becoming TTL's RAID: Shadow Legends?
Does the water shield from Sonic 3 make a return?
Does Sonic actually learn to swim ITTL?
Or does Sonic spend half of the game freaking out about being on a water planet?
Following today's Smash reveal, I think this was worth bringing up lol
Ry nearly predicted the future.
We always memed up fighters or think, if X company got a chance, he would be in.... OTL is copying us, that is very flattering.
(so Rayman could be last, better him than crash)
I still want Crash in more than anyone else. But I 100% expect the last one to be a joke character. My money’s on Waluigi or Tingle.