E3 Hopes & Predictions, Revisited

Okay, so with Day 1 over I thought we'd go ahead and take a look at the hopes I had and predictions I made and see where we stand.

Hopes: We did learn more about Batman: Arkham Origins

We got a tiny amount of gameplay wrapped into a brand-new trailer that features a new assassin announced.  Not out of the woods yet as far as it being a good game, but I've got a lot of faith in it now.  (Also, I've got a lot of love for WB for adding the AzBats costume.)

Prediction #1: We did NOT learn more about the next next Arkham game

Neither Sony or Microsoft brought it up in their conferences and I'm guessing Warner Bros. is satisfied enough with the response to Origins that they won't try and mention this game's existence until they have to, or want to.

Hopes:  We saw footage for both The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age: Inquistion

While we haven't seen any sign of Lords of the Fallen (yet, there's still 3 days to go), The Witcher 3 was apart of Microsoft's conference and Dragon Age: Inquisition was part of EA's.  You can check both those trailers out here.

 

In general this is a new era for Western RPGs, one which is embracing the potential of an open-world, which I completely support.

 Hope: The Return of J-RPGs to consoles

Well, so far...

The moment I saw a Kingdom Hearts character I knew it was KH3, and at that very moment I knew Sony had won E3.  Also remember that Square has yet to show us what Agni's Philosophy is, so unless its connected to Final Fantasy XV (possible), it means Square has at least one more game to show us.

See, a full J-RPG revival would come with the announcement of Persona 5 (something I've never tried but many J-RPG fans love) and the localization of the new Legend of Heroes game, Trails of the Flash, but for now we should take what we can get and shut up.  Plus we still have TGS in 3 months.

Hope: We did not get a comic book superhero game not about Batman

Unless this counts: 

 

I personally don't count it because he's not from the comics, but I would've let it slide if they'd found a neat way to give him a secret identity and incorporate that into gameplay.  But that's not inFamous, and we didn't get any of that.  There's three days left so I'm remaining fairly hopeful.  We'll see what happens.

Prediction #2: We DID Learn PS4's price and stance on used games

I was right, mostly.  Sony took the "friend of the gamers" approach and Jack Tretton confidently strode out there and informed everyone things for the PS4 will be largely the same (you have to pay to use multiplayer now) as they are for the PS3.  They also followed that up by explaining the PS4's price was $399, something I explicitly predicted would happen.   

Prediction #2: We did NOT learn about their launch day games

Sony was all too keen to show us the assortment of "over 140 titles" in development for the PS4, "100 of which will be released in the next year".  And that's great.  But you just had one of the biggest coups at E3 we've seen in YEARS.  I mean, for a long time we as gamers have been sitting down and talking about who "won" E3 when there were really just degrees of meh, but Sony stomped a mudhole into Microsoft by keeping a gamer-first stance on used games, showing us a huge number of titles, and topped it off with giving their system a reasonable price.

So now you have tons of fans looking to pre-order the Playstation 4, but...what are they playing with it?  We learned a few launch day games, but none of them are exactly ones that convince people to make a Day 1 purchase.  They mostly strayed away from launch "day" and stuck to "launch window", but as good a console as it might be, its just a shiny box without games, especially on the first day.  Don't just leave us playing the PS4 version of a PS3 game, Sony.

Hopes: Surprise!

The Order: 1886 starts out with a quote from the original King Arthur story, Le Morte D'Arthur.  That was an insta-win.  Then as the footage went on we got to see this game takes place in an anachronism stew of a world, with steampunk weapons and airships and guns more advance than what we have now and old-school British outfits, along with a character named Lancelot.

I think its too soon to call this a King Arthur steampunk game, but I DO think it looks like it has a lot of potential.  I wouldn't be mad if this turned out to be a launch day title.

Overall this was a very productive first day for E3, and I'm looking forward to some of the surprises remaining from the smaller publishers/developers over the remainder of the convention.