E3 2018 Hopes and Dreams

E3 is one of the greatest times of the year. New video games are announced, you learn new details about upcoming games, and despite saying that hype has ruined some games for me in the very last blog post, sometimes you just have to give in and get hyped. Coming mere days from now, we will get press conferences from EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo (as well as a few others that don’t excite me nearly as much). This blog post is going to go over what these companies have to do to get me really excited and in some cases, bring me back as a consumer.

Let’s go in order of the conferences, and start with Electronic Arts (EA) who kicks it all off on Saturday June 9 at 2PM ET. EA is generally one of the conferences that I hate watching, but love seeing highlights afterwards. They take hours and give information that could be done in 30 minutes, have guest speakers and super long gameplay footage that lose my attention within minutes, but I must say they usually give me some information that excites me. Last year they announced the new BioWare game Anthem, for example and announced a new story mode in Madden NFL. Well this year, they can get my attention pretty easily. Bring the new campaign style of Madden (it is also similar to the FIFA one as well) to NHL. I played NHL more than any other game with the possible exception of Call of Duty in my life. Year after year I would buy the new iteration to play competitively with and against my friends, and sometimes dabble in the single player modes. 2018 is the first time I can remember not buying NHL in over 10 years. Give me a reason to come back, and I’ll be ecstatic. Secondly, show more Anthem. There has been very little information on the game, but what we’ve seen looks amazing, and I need more. The independent developed games that EA has showcased over the past few years are always neat to see (think Unravel or A Way Out), but they aren’t a huge deal to me. Battlefield is always great, but never usually keeps me coming back like Call of Duty does. The only other thing that would make me shout in excitement is to have a new Star Wars game with a campaign that actually looks cool. The odds of this are slim to none seeing as they shut down a studio who was working on this exact title, saying that they wanted to change directions and make a more multiplayer styled game (even though they already have Battlefront for that, but hey who am I to tell one of the industries’ most successful companies that they’re wrong).

Next comes Microsoft at 4PM ET on Sunday June 10. I have a feeling that this is going to be the one to watch this year, considering how Microsoft has been falling behind in mindshare and market share since the release of the new consoles. Microsoft has a great message of focusing on games and gamers, and great presentation skills to boost this message, but simply hasn’t had the games to make a difference. Halo has gone downhill since Bungie relinquished control to 343 Industries, and Gears of War has an outdated style that simply doesn’t belong in 2018 if you ask me. This year though, I have a good feeling (and that might just be fool’s hope, but I’m holding onto it damnit). Halo 6 needs to come out, and it needs to look awesome. I don’t know how it needs to change, I don’t know what it will have to show for me to think it looks cool, but they need to figure that out. Next they need new IPs, because other than Halo and Gears, there’s not a whole lot else that gets people excited (and yes, I know there’s Forza but as someone who doesn’t care about racing games, I can’t speak to it). Now Halo is an obvious one, and new IPs is broad so I’ll go with one more thing that they could do to make me dust off my XBOX One. Show us Borderlands 3, and give us a reason to buy it on XBOX instead of PlayStation. Whether it be an exclusive that I can’t play on PlayStation or some exclusive DLC that looks interesting, I need a reason to pass up on playing on my usual console to play on XBOX.

Bethesda could very well be the one that will show me nothing that I would be excited for on Sunday at 9:30 ET. To clarify, they’ve proved me wrong before, showing off Doom, Prey and Fallout games at previous years’ conferences. Even as someone who didn’t play Doom or Prey, they looked cool and I honestly regret missing out on playing them at a time they were relevant. This year, my prediction is that we get information on Fallout 76, but that it’s not the game I want. I’ve read nothing but people trying to temper expectations since its announcement so my hopes aren’t exactly high anymore. Next will be the new Elder Scrolls game. I never played Oblivion, and after a half hour with Skyrim I just wasn’t hooked. Maybe the new game can do what the predecessors couldn’t, but like I said about Fallout 76, my hopes aren’t high. Showing a new Doom game might be cool, but as someone who never played the previous one (or any of the old school Doom games) I would need to be shown a reason to hop in at this time. I would be happy if these predictions are false, so prove me wrong Bethesda.

Develver Digital and Square Enix both have conferences that follow, but generally both make games that do not interest me, so I won’t be watching them, and will just read to see if there’s anything I missed afterwards.

Ubisoft will come on stage Monday at 4PM ET and they have the potential to really wow me. I used to love playing Assassins Creed games, but starting with Black Flag, I found no urge to want to play them again. Assassins Creed Origins came out this past year and having skipped out on one that was deemed to be a return to their good old days, I’m ready to come back to the franchise to play that and whatever comes next. Show me another return to form with an interesting story and stop shoving UPlay down my throat when I want to open a damn chest, and I’ll be back. Next would be the Division 2, but Ubisoft needs to show me that they can make a game better than the first, and better than Destiny. These types of games are time consuming, and playing multiple will stretch me out thin, so I need to choose. If this looks better than Destiny 2 and promises to keep me in for the long haul, I’ll be extremely excited. I’ve never been a Far Cry, or a Splinter Cell or a Rainbow Six guy, so these games won’t do a whole lot for me.

PC Gaming has a conference, but the only game I would be excited to see there would be Diablo 4, and I see no universe where Blizzard doesn’t hold that for their own show, Blizzcon.

Next to wrap up Monday at 9PM ET is Sony. I see no “Holy Shit” moments coming this year from Sony, but information on Days Gone, The Last of Us Part 2, and Death Stranding might be enough to satisfy me. I’m already excited for all of these games, so part of me just wants to see nothing until they are released, but the other part of me wants to get hyped and see more. If they could do one thing that I’m almost certain won’t happen, it would be to have a new Ratchet and Clank game, as well as bringing back PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Insomniac is hard at work on the new Spiderman game, so even if there was a new Ratchet and Clank, it would be a different developer, and that alone would make the announcement less interesting to me. As for All-Stars, the first one apparently was deemed a failure, so I’m not sure they’re willing to go back in that direction. I’ve heard rumours of an All-Stars kart racer which would also me awesome, but if they could get a Smash Bros imitation done correctly it would make my dreams come true.

Finally is the Tuesday noon ET conference of Nintendo. This one could sell a Switch, since I’m already on the fence. Mario Odyssey and Zelda: Breath of the Wild are both games that had no resonance or nostalgia for me, but I could see myself giving them a try. I’ve always been a fan of Mario Kart, and with Super Smash Bros coming out, it would be nice to have a console where I could play some fun games with friends and my fiancée. What I need is one final reason to hop on board. In my mind that’s either going to be from the new Pokemon being actually different from the rest of its prequels and showing that they can evolve, giving me a new 2D Mario similar to Super Mario World, or a new 2D Donkey Kong game. I almost kind of want these to not happen since I’d rather not drop several hundreds of dollars to buy a Switch along with all of the aforementioned games, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

When I look back on the games that I just asked for, I know that they won’t all come true, but if E3 over the years has taught me anything, it’s that this is a magical time of year for gamers, and that announcements beyond my wildest expectations can happen. Will the hype that I’m creating for myself lead to disappointment over the next week as the press conferences role out? Maybe. But is it also possible that I leave this week reinvigorated as a gamer, ready to hop on and play game after game? You bet your ass.