Reflections on the Past E3

  In the annals of man's history, there are numerous events that have lifted his soul above the everyday and the banal and made him contemplate life. The invention of the airplane, the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the Spanish Reconquista come to mind. E3 2021, however, was not one of these events. Flying in the face of my original high expectations for this year's E3, the final product we fans were delivered can only make me exclaim the following:

Chef Skinner expresses his justifiable outrage over E3 2021.

    

    This E3 was a series of one letdown after another. Most of the games that were shown were bad, and few of my desired reveals occurred. While the fact that my pet projects didn't see the light of day isn't too surprising, neither did the hopes and dreams of almost any fans of any franchises! Most promising in-development games received no word as to their development statuses, which I will list in greater detail below. I had assumed that since game developers skipped E3 last year and had a whole year's reservoir of information to share, this year would be jam-packed full of exciting announcements, but I was sorely mistaken. It turns out that game developers had nothing to show for themselves, and in some cases it would have been better if they actually didn't show anything at all. (I'm looking at you, Square Enix.) I hadn't watched E3 for several years before I tuned into E3 2021, but this year's presentations were so bad that I feel a strong inclination to avoid watching them in the future, so as not to disappoint and disgust myself.

    Now I shall offer my thoughts on the conferences of the developers I mentioned in my previous post on E3: whether they lived up to my expectations or not, which of my hopes (if any) were fulfilled, and then I shall assign them a final grade. Without further ado, here is my evaluation of E3 2021, company by company.

1. BANDAI NAMCO

    Bandai Namco's E3 presentation was nothing short of abysmal. Indeed, the only grade I could fairly give it would be a resounding F. It consisted of a single trailer for a Western game called House of Ashes, developed by Supergiant Games, followed by a developer interview on said game. Now, if said game had been featured in Ubisoft's presentation, say, or Take Two Interactive's, I wouldn't complain. I wouldn't be enthused by the game, either, but I would acknowledge that there is a place for Western games in Western developer presentations. But to have literally the sole focus of one of the largest Japanese game developers' presentations at the biggest video game conference of the year be a Western game that it is merely publishing is wholly unacceptable. It is nothing short of asinine, as well as insulting to its fans. In general, fans of Japanese games watch Japanese game developer conferences hoping to see new games from their favorite Japanese game franchises, or to see a new surprise Japanese IP reveal. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as fans of Deus Ex watching Square Enix's press conference in hopes of a new game announcement for said series, but these are merely exceptions to the rule. And Supergiant Games does not have nearly the devoted fanbase that Deus Ex does.

    In addition, FromSoftware's new unannounced game was nowhere to be seen. I had hoped we'd see its reveal this E3, but no dice. To be sure, it is possible that it's not being published by Bandai Namco, but no other publisher has announced it yet, either. It seems to still be languishing in obscurity in some corner of FromSoftware's headquarters in Tokyo, apparently not yet ready for public scrutiny.

    Of course, there's one thing about Bandai Namco's "E3" presence that I am neglecting to mention: Elden Ring. When I said that I could only give Bandai Namco's E3 conference an F, I was excluding Elden Ring, for Elden Ring was not revealed at E3 this year, but rather at Geoff Keighley's "Summer Game Fest," which was held two days prior to the commencement of E3. But since the Summer Game Fest was held in such close proximity to E3, I will make an exception to strict E3 conference grading and include its reveal as part of Bandai Namco's E3 presentation. As I mentioned in my first post, I was hoping that Elden Ring would show up this year, and show up it did. Although, frustratingly, Elden Ring was not shown any further at E3, as many suspected it would be following its reveal at the Summer Game Fest, which is yet another stain on Bandai Namco's E3 presence this year. But at long last, we've got ourselves a release date for FromSoftware's next epic dark fantasy adventure. I'm looking forward to its release, and as a matter of fact, its reveal at E3 this year was good enough to lift Bandai Namco's grade from an F to a D. Such is the power of FromSoftware games.

GRADE: D

2. NINTENDO

    Ah, yes, Nintendo, the saviors of the American game industry. The most seasoned console maker in business today, and the last of the Japanese console-making giants. (I don't count Sony as Japanese anymore, since they moved PlayStation's headquarters to California in 2016.) I had hoped they'd offer us a reveal of Breath of the Wild 2, along with news on Pikmin 4, Monolith Soft's new games, and a new Fire Emblem title. Alas, only one of these hopes actually was fulfilled.

    

    Nintendo's conference had the most games of any that I watched, so I must commend them heartily for that. In an E3 short not just on new reveals, but games at all, Nintendo at least brought games to the table. And they even brought a surprise, too. A new 2D Metroid game was announced, apparently the first in 19 years, an announcement which was received positively by fans. I myself have never played a Metroid game, so it didn't interest me very much, but I am happy for fans of said series. Shin Megami Tensei V, a game which had languished in development hell until last year, received a release date and finally showed some gameplay. And, as I mentioned above, Breath of the Wild 2 was revealed, and a release window given. These are significant positives, to be sure. But there were also quite a few negatives, too. So many that I'd say they outnumbered the positives.

    Firstly, as I mentioned above, Nintendo failed to show any of the games I was excited for other than Breath of the Wild 2. As I mentioned in my first post, it has been literally four years since Pikmin 4 last received an update. In the time since, Nintendo has released both a Mario Golf and a Mario Tennis game. (Well, the Mario Golf game isn't out yet, but it will be in four days.) The ordering of Nintendo's priorities is out of whack. It's high time Nintendo either reveals this game or disconfirms its existence. Similarly, it has been nearly two years since the last Fire Emblem game was released, and in the whole history of the series, the longest gap between game releases has been three years. Since no new Fire Emblem game has been revealed yet, it is very unlikely that one will be releasing later this year, which means that we are due for a new title next year. I hope Nintendo shows it sooner rather than later. No word was given on whatever Monolith Soft is doing at the moment, which is disappointing. Furthermore, though I am not a Metroid fan (as I mentioned earlier), I feel badly for the fans because Metroid Prime 4 was not revealed (as many were hoping it would be), but rather merely received an update saying that it was "progressing." And the poor Bayonetta fans received no word on the third title in their series, which supposedly was a Switch exclusive game. The last word on it came in December 2017. And even though Breath of the Wild 2 was shown, its trailer was not very promising. It appears that the game will use the same map as Breath of the Wild, with some modifications like floating islands. But I am not confident that floating islands will be enough to spruce up Breath of the Wild's map. It would not be enjoyable to run around the same map once again, since part of the fun of Breath of the Wild was exploration. If the map has already been explored in the previous game, and its sequel merely makes minor modifications to it, what would be the point of playing the sequel at all? As it is, it's still too early to dismiss the game out of hand. I am still hoping that Nintendo adds actual Zelda dungeons to Breath of the Wild 2, and I hope the game turns out well in the end.

GRADE: C-

3. SEGA

    I won't have to spend much time on this section. Sega had no conference at all this year. Despite E3's official website listing them as a participating developer, they did not show off anything other than a trailer for an 11-year old Sonic game. That was it. I cannot even fathom how this occurred. Not only was nothing interesting shown, nothing at all was shown. No Persona, No Project Re Fantasy, nothing from Atlus, nothing from Sega itself, nothing at all. That Sonic trailer doesn't even count. How was Sega even listed as a participating developer? It boggles the mind. There was some profound incompetence on the Entertainment Software Assocation's part here, or else on Sega's part. Anyway, having no conference at all automatically assigns Sega an F.

GRADE: F

4. SQUARE ENIX

    Good grief. Square Enix's presentation was probably my most anticipated of E3, and yet it ended up being a complete disaster. The presentation lasted about 40 minutes, and yet incomprehensibly, the first 20 or so minutes of it were devoted to showing off a Western-developed Guardians of the Galaxy game. How did this happen? It's the same thing that happened with Bandai Namco, all over again! Nobody watches Square Enix press conferences for news about Guardians of the Galaxy games! People watch them for news about Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, or Kingdom Hearts or Deus Ex (as I mentioned above). The rest of the conference consisted of announcing remasters, DLC to a (Western) game that flopped, mobile games, and two other games which I shall describe in greater detail. The first is Babylon's Fall. This game is being developed by PlatinumGames, a studio known for making high-quality action games. As such, I was happy to see it shown off at Square Enix's presentation. Unfortunately, its reveal was also accompanied by some bad news: it will be published as a live service title. This is disappointing to hear. The game originally looked like it would be a single-player action game, like those that Platinum is known for, but instead now it looks as though it will have multiplayer mechanics and live service elements shoehorned in. This is not good. It is perhaps too early to proclaim the downfall of the game, but it is certainly a distinct possibility now, and more so than it was before. And the other game was a Final Fantasy game, which is great. But it wasn't a great Final Fantasy game. Not in the least. As a matter of fact, it looked awful. Final Fantasy Origin, as the game is called, is a spin-off of the mainline Final Fantasy series, but it lacks all of what made Final Fantasy good in the first place. Final Fantasy traditionally was renowned for its art direction, character designs, music, worlds, and to some degree plot. But the trailer that was shown was truly laughable, with an absurdly edgy tone that does not befit a Final Fantasy title, a ludicrous main character who looks like he came straight from an American gym, and horrible art direction and character designs. This is all the more disappointing considering the fact that Tetsuya Nomura did the game's artwork and character designs, and he has proven his mettle in both of these fields time and time again with his work on older Final Fantasy games, and considering the fact that the game takes place in the universe of Final Fantasy I, which had excellent art direction and character designs due to its fantastic artist, Yoshitaka Amano. The least Square Enix could have done was to hire him out to work on this game. But no. It was not to be.

    There was nothing in Square Enix's presentation that wasn't disappointing in some way. There was no word on Final Fantasy XVI at all, let alone a release date, and nothing on either of Yoko Taro's new games. Well over half of the presentation was spent focused on Western games, an absurdly high proportion considering that, again, this is a Japanese developer's press conference. I was greatly disappointed by the conference as I watched it. The company I was most excited for turned out to be my biggest disappointment.

GRADE: F

    Well, E3 this year was a pile of garbage. But at least we got to see Elden Ring at the Summer Game Fest. Thanks, Geoff, for attempting to salvage the smoldering corpse of E3 before it even began. Maybe the Tokyo Game Show will have some actual news. Or maybe next year's E3 will be better. But I won't be getting my hopes up again any time soon. Until next time, my fair readers.

OVERALL E3 GRADE: F