E3 2016
I am not a big gamer, so I don't follow game news or announcements that closely. Last year I was watching the Sony press conference stream and it was quite an incredible experience. Learning that FF7 is having a remake, The Last Guardian isn't canceled, a peek of Kingdom Hearts 3, and FF15 stuff in an hour show was a bit overwhelming. Since E3 is happening now, I figured I would watch the streams again.
So the schedule for E3 is a bit packed full of things going on. The press conferences were first then the show room stuff in the days after. The only press conference I watched was Sony's because I forgot about the other ones. I didn't expect they top last years and I was right. While they did show some neat looking games, the only one I cared about was The Last Guardian which announced its release date. Its coming out in a October which is a lot sooner than I imagined!
The next day I mainly watched the Nintendo stream which is kind of amazing since it was 90% Zelda stuff. It strangely didn't feel redundant despite they they played the same demo multiple times, but each showed different aspects of the game. Now I never played any Zelda games since it never really appealed to me, but this new Zelda, Breath of the Wild, is quite different. It actually looks fun. The art is quite vector-y, but they call it cell shading style. The world is open, and you can hunt and cook food which makes it feel like an mmo to me. What I liked the most is you have the option to play the game with Link wearing nothing but his boxers. While I'm talking about Link, I do like the look of him in this game. He has a more anime character look or something. His animations and stuff are nice too. I can't get enough of his shivering animation. He's just really cute to me in this game. The amiibos annouced with this game are also quite highly detailed that it does peak my interest. This game is set to be out in 2017 for Wii U and Wii NX.
The third and fourth day I mostly paid attention to the Square Enix stuff and some Nintendo stuff. Nintendo didn't have anything that peaked my interest that day. The FFXV segments didn't show much new stuff, and Kingdom Hearts 2.8 segment did clear up what it contains. The co-director did mention Kingdom Hearts 3 a bit but could only say that its development is going along fine. There were a lot of people in chat for the streams asking about KH3 and FF7 remakes, but since nothing at E3 even indicate that these titles will be showcased these people can only blame themselves for hoping for anything about those games at E3 this year. Since Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 2.8 are coming out this year, it makes sense for the dev and staff to want to focus on those titles to boost sales. Speaking of Kingdom Hearts, I read that they haven't ruled out a KH collection on PS4 which is a relief to hear since I would've bought the last two remixs for PS3. Fourth day is the last day, and since there's no more Nintendo stuff I only watched Square enix's stream. This day exceeded my expectations on two games that I was interested in. First is NieR Automata, the sequel game to NieR. I did play NieR and I have to admit I hardly remember much of it other than the intersex character and the amazing music. Also didn't know its a spinoff of Drakengard either. I actually didn't expect much for this game since the main characters didn't appeal to me much plus sequel games don't seem to be as good as the original. But watching this segment, the director an the dev guys have such cute personalities. The game play demo they showed impressed me. The move set and attacks look so cool and fast! The graphics quality is also impressive as well as it looks gorgeous and plays so smoothly. They also showed gameplay footage of a boss battle, and WOW the music is absolutely gorgeous. Really enjoyed the varies move sets the boss has, and really liked how the camera even changes on certain bullet hell style moves too. This segment really made me excited for this game! Another game is World of Final Fantasy. When they first announced this last year at E, I laughed and thought this looked silly. Over time I did start to find the chibi design really cute though. The game's segment showed more on this game which made it really charming. This system of holding your things on top of your head, and even in battle you have friendly creatures on top of your or you're riding on it. I have to say, I am not a fan of some of the translations in the English version . If this game had a digital version, I would've bought the Japanese version instead since I don't think this game will feature dual audio. The Q&A with FFXV's director is the last segment which is rather interesting to my surprise. Hearing that the game main story is 50 hours long, but with additional stuff it can be 200 hours of gameplay is rather overwhelming. It does make me curious about the story and the world.
So there isn't any news on Wii NX or Playstaion Neo which is kind of frustrating. There's quite a lot of console only games that I want to play, and I don't want to end up buying 4 consoles in one year. I haven't play a console game in so long. There is a PS3 and a Wii in my house but they're just collecting dust.
Overall, I did enjoy the E3 stuff though it is terribly distracting, and is making me spend money on more games that I first anticipated. My wallet will be crying for the next few months.
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