Bethesda, Bethesda, Bethesda. E3: 2018. What do you have for us? I'm watching the press conference now, and so far, we've seen a new, pink trailer for Rage 2.

Fallout 76 is the biggest part of their show, no doubt. Please stand by, for another Open World post-apoclyptic world. This time, set in West Virginia. From the Microsoft press conference, we already know that this will be four times bigger than Fallout 4, but what does that mean, when Fallout 4 was a largely empty, desolate wasteland that quickly turned into a Minecraft simulator for you to fill in the blanks in the environment with your own homesteads?

What follows are my live remarks about the show.

A countdown timer. How lovely. Is this the big explosion we're waiting for that leads to the creation of a real life post-apocalyptic wasteland? Sadly, it wasn't. We're shown a show reel of kids leaving for school, yoga, snow, modern life; a snapshot of Bethesda's staff, or humanity at large.

We try and break things. That's a good description of what you do, Bethesda. :)

There's now a montage of the titles that will on display. There's a lot of Rage in there, and a shade of Dishonoured.

Now for the main show!

Pete Hines

What do you have to tell us today, mate? The theme this year for the show is "create".

"We create the worlds, but you create the stories, and experiences."

Refelection: Prey, Wolfenstein, Dishonoured, Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout and Skyrim VR, two games on the Switch. Somehow, Bethesda achieved the highest rank publisher in the world, according to Meta Critic last year.

Rage 2

Are you ready to Rage? A band walks out onto stage. I don't know who they are, the name Andrew WK is on the stage. "You better get ready to die, you better get ready to kill." The keyboard riff makes this song far too playful and bright for something that should be about premeditated slaughter of things. It feels like Rage 2 goes down the path Borderlands, judging only from this song.

Give me gameplay footage, not fucking theatrics about a song related to the game. Pay the musicians and please get them off stage. A viking god walks onto stage, accompanied by a business man. The viking god, from Avalanche Studios, speaks to the business man, from iD, and Rage 2 is some sort of collaboration.

It will be an open world shooter, set in a dystopian future, devoid of society, law and order.

Show. Us. The. Game.

Oh, that's nice. It is playable at E3. I'm not there, so please, show me the trailer!

The trailer opens cheerfully. An asteroid wipes out 80% of the world's population. Then somehow, there's mutants to fight as well. The game is all about survival, vehicular combat, and an angry man. If you can see something in the world, you can drive it, or so we're told.

It is a very cinematic trailer, for something that's an open world game. There are explosions galore, and fast paced combat. The Amazon Pre-order page tells us the rest:

Elder Scrolls: Legends

The digital card game. It will get a new, relaunch - Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox 1 will get all of that cardy-stuff. Any progress made will carry over to the console versions. This isn't really huge news, just information about expansion.

What does the future of the game hold? Not much, according to the very short trailer.

Elder Scrolls: Online

Talking about being MMO of the year, the recent release of Summerset, and talking about new DLC that comes out every quarter. The next DLC is a dungeon based thing, called Wolfhunter; based on werewolves. Then there's some story content coming later this year.

A bit of a trailer about some of the characters, and stories forged through Elder Scrolls Online. Looks like a "play our game now, please, there's tons of content there already."

Judging by the screams of fans, everyone wants more in this world. I didn't realise it was such a big deal. Apparently, it is. There's one thing for sure, it is a gorgeous looking game!

Doom?

A bloody, demonic wasteland, filled with writhing mires of lava, tentacles, and skeletons on sticks. This game looks new to me, or it is another entry into the Doom universe. I bet it's Doom 4: VR. Nope, I'm wrong. It is Doom: Eternal

Doom: Eternal

Tell us more, lads. A sequel to Doom. More power. More demons. Twice as many, to be exact. There'll be literal hell on Earth. There's some things that we might not be expecting. There will be more to come at QuakeCon in August this year.

Quake Champions

Now, the trailer. Why is there a Quake symbol? Oh, there's no trailer. Quake is 22 years old. This sounds like an e-sports launch for Quake. It is, after all, the original e sport. There'll be more tournaments, more prize money. There is a reflection of some new content that was recently added.

"This week only, Quake Champions" will be open to everyone, "before it even launches". If you download this week, it will be free forever. Probably worth the sign up, guys!

Here's a new trailer, too. It looks like all hte fun I had with Quake 3, just with some additional visual polish, and different characters. It's starting to look like a cross between Overwatch and Team Fortress, which I'm not so sure is a great idea for something that was primarily a solo death match experience. Put this on the "do more research list".

Prey

A thanks to the fan base about the game. A huge, free update for Prey. Three new modes - story mode, survival mode, and new game plus. There's also a new DLC - "moon-crash", which introduces replay-ability with new monsters, and things to encounter each time you play.

There's a simulation of the hardcore mode, with 50+ resets, bringing the rogue like to the FPS genre in a very interesting twist. The twitch stream is full of "F" for pay respects with every death.

Prey is about playing your own way. There's one more surprise. "A lethal game of hide and seek". 1v5. Disguise yourself as everyday objects and hunt down the enemy. It sounds very interesting, but I'm more intruiged by the "mooncrash" content - Soldier of Fortune had something similar back in the day, and a modern twist would be great.

Wolfenstein

The creative director and exec producer take the stage. What do these two have in store for us? So far, it looks like Bethesda are putting on a good show, and are featuring a few titles that I have missed. Oh. Wolfenstein is coming to Switch too. "Fight the Nazis on the go."

There's are new tale. 1980s, Paras, Wolfenstein: Young Blood sees the setting transform to the twin daughters of our hero, and will be a co-op title. That sounds like a great twist on the setting. I haven't played any of the more recent Wolfenstein games, but this is making me want to go back.

My Steam library is already far too big though. What a dilemna. I'm like five years behind when it comes to games.

Pete Hines, again.

Pete is back. He's talking about VR as well. Prey's competitive mode will have VR. There will also be a single player experience for Prey.

And there'll be Wolfenstein: Cyber Pilot, another VR title where you can hack robots and turn them against their masters.

These titles are playable at E3.

Fallout 76

Perhaps 76 will be the lowest review score for the game. Todd Howard is introduced to the stage, to talk about his newest game. Let's see what the man can say about the title.

"I think its to say where we're putting Skyrim next." Skyrim looks to the future. It's ultimate version. Alexa, play Skyrim. It is a parody. I hope. That was a genuinely amusing, self-absorbed parody. GG Bethesda.

Fallout 76 is a prequel to all the other games.

• 4 times the size of FO4
• West Hills of Virginia
• A black and white trailer of the bombs dropping.
• It morphs into the same trailer shown in Microsoft's press conference earlier.

You must rebuild. Not just walls, not just buildings, but hearts, and minds, and America itself. Do we really want to rebuild a nuked wasteland of America, though?

Vault 76 sees you await reclamation day. You've lived in the vault for 25 years. The footage now changes to a first person view of the vault being exited by your player character for the first time. New rendering, new lighting, new landscapes. 16 times the detail, and distant weather systems across the map.

The game, being set in West Virginia has six distinct regions. New creatures, and there's folklore from West Virginia mixed in with the fictions of the game.

There's one big difference with this game - each character that exits the vault is a real person. Fallout 76 is an online only experience, persistent world? Instances? This is a big departure from the game.

You can, of course, play it solo, Howard explains. "Softcore Survival" is this game, instead of "Hardcore Survival". You'll never see a server. You'll be in a world with dozens of other players. It sounds like the world will be based on small instances.

It will try to focus on emergent storytelling. Another trailer now. You can find friends, you can find enemies. You can go alone, or with friends. There will be fun activities. It looks like most of those activities involve shooting at things. It looks like party size is four.

In more immersion breaking, you can build what you want, where you want. You're no longer limited to a small sandbox area. This looks very EVE Online - hopefully you can attack other player's camps, but it doesn't look like that. It looks like monsters will try to ravage your creations. In typical Fallout fashion, it is Utopian in design.

There will be atomic bunkers all around the map, and people will be able to do whatever they want with them. The trailer is charming and amusing, and the fact that you can nuke other areas of the world is a rather excellent one. It looks like following the nuclear explosion, there's a raid-type event to get loot.

This game is promising a great deal. It will be hosted on dedicated servers too. There'll be a beta too. Break it Early, Test Application, by Vault Tec. In the same breath, Todd Howard tells us that his games have had bugs, and that sometimes, it just doesn't work.

Now he's talking about the Collector's edition for the game. There's a map of the world, that glows in the dark. Because, you know, radiation. There's some figures. And there's another collectible. It looks like it will be a Fallout themed power-helmet. It has a light, and a voice changer. You got the pipboy last time, so now you have some parts of the power armor.

The release date is far sooner than expected, 14 November, 2018. It doesn't sound too complicated to get to market, building upon the architecture of ESO.

Fallout Shelter also gets a release on PS4 and the Nintendo Switch. More expansion, more monetisiation. They're out now, apparently.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades

A new mobile game. An experience not found anywhere else. What's this? A pure Elder Scrolls game. A first person RPG, console quality graphics, and combat follows your movements and timings. It's being demoed on an iPhone X on stage.

A mixture of hand-crafted and procedural dungeons, with all the standard armor, customisation, crafting, but with a unique, mobile twist. It can be played in landscape, or portrait mode at any time.

Please tell me this will be available on Android and not just iPhones. The Abyss is a rogue like experience, The arena is 1v1, fight me bitch, and the final mode, Town - which gives you quests, stories, and other stuff to do.

There's a town building mode in the game as well - with the ability to visit your friend's towns, unlock new NPCs and quests. Blades will be available on every device conceivable. Every phone - VR mode on phones and high end gaming PCs alike.

It will be on Android, too. Thankfully.

And the future

A new, next gen, singleplayer game. An all new, "epic franchise", completely new. There's a long shot of a planet in this trailer, suggesting perhaps a space-based theme. Yep, there's a satellite of some sort. It's called Starfield.

Then, there's another game after that one - could this be the next real, singleplayer Elder Scrolls title? It looks like it, based on the sprawling landscape. Yes - it is

The Elder Scrolls VI

There's nothing beyond that. Everyone knew that Bethesda would be working on this.

Overall rating: Pleasantly Surprised