My Thoughts on the Bethesda, Microsoft, and Devolver Digital E3 Conferences

Microsoft -

It's kind of funny, the biggest issue with Microsoft has always been their ability to hold a conference for their gaming console and show almost no games. And now we actually had a showcase of a lot of games, but still, it's an utterly terrible showing.

So many games they did show just looked like they were trying to be edgy versions of other games, most notably 'Bleeding Edge', which pretty much everyone is comparing to Overwatch. And then there was that godawful Gears of War Five bit with the screaming faces, and a Blair Witch game of all things. Who asked for any of this? Who wants any of this?

Pretty much every good thing shown is coming out on other platforms that people actually have, and we are to late into this console generation for there to be a push for more console sales, so pretty much everything shown is only for people who already have an Xbox One and their Xbox Pass service. And while that's certainly nice, I really don't think this is what Microsoft needed. Of course, they are behind enough that I have no idea what it is they needed.

They talked about the coming Project Scarlet, the next Xbox Console, and that was so full on meaningless buzzwords I don't think I believe half of what they are saying. Faster load times would be great, but otherwise, I remain skeptical as hell.

The real problem though is Double Fine. At this point, Tim Schafer has built up so much ill will with publishers and consumers alike because of how horribly everything he has done lately goes. Making a big deal out of Double Fine feels like Microsoft is getting desperate, especially when paired with the above sketchiness of their console details.

Nothing about this conference I think is going to get anyone hyped for the Xbone or the upcoming Projects Scarlet late next year, and it certainly isn't going to cause sales of the Xbone to jump up for games you can already get elsewhere. I honestly don't know what the point of this conference even was.

Bethesda Conference -

The majority of this conference is about phone games, Elder Scrolls Online, and Fallout 76, things that not too many people care that much about. Myself included, so most of the conference was just kind of boring. At the same time, while I don't care at all about Blades as I'm not a phone gamer, it is kind of cool that progress carries over from the Phone version to the Switch Version. So if you are into it, it's nice you can play on the switch as well without losing progress.

And Ghostwire actually looks pretty awesome. The visuals are on point, and I”m kind of intrigued as to what happened to all those people. It was a bit silly they used the Japan devs to promote it considering their English was pretty bad and could be a bit hard to understand, but the lady who came out was so excited about the game it almost didn't matter what she was saying, so I'll let it go. The premise seems to be trying to solve the mystery of why everyone vanished, with some action elements. No gameplay, but the base idea has me invested.

For the first time, I think I will actually be getting me a new FPS with Doom Eternal though. While I never liked FPS's much, I do like me some violence, and Eternal seems to be added a lot more mobility options for moving around the map which could add a fair bit to the fun of the game. It may be worth it to me to grab this one, and if you liked Doom all this time already you get a lot of guns and demons to kill, so I think it's likely you'll dig it.

The interesting thing was Orion. This is software that will allegedly cut down on Latency and Bandwidth, the two major issues with Streaming right now. While it's not something that I think is likely to completely overcome the issues with streaming games, if it works it will be accessible to a lot more people and move towards making this a real option in the future. Whether or not that ends up being a good thing we will eventually see, but regardless it seems the tech is getting there.

Devolver Digital -

Here's the thing, the games these guys release aren't often my cup of tea, only occasionally do they grab my attention with something as delightfully crazy as Metal Wolf Chaos, but for the most part, these aren't games I really go to and nothing has changed after this.

I mostly talk about this at all because I am about 90% sure that the only reason Devolver Digital even goes to E3 is to shit on E3.