A New Classy and Subclassy Look
Really brief:
The website underwent another overhaul, this time in the guise of Phantasy Star Online 2. To calculate how many hours were poured into the original PSO on the Gamecube would be to take back entire months of my life. Each trip to the Forest, Caves, and Mines in search of rare, red little boxes was the thrill of my teenage years (outside of puberty; another red, little box in its own right).
And with the release of Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, it was time to overhaul the site in the look of the famous RPG (you know, since I happened to have a finished logo sitting around). Feel free to check out the art for the site I made below!
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E3 in a Nutshell
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
This game is the ultimate strategy, adorable, funny, X-COM inspired take on the genre, bundle of joy you’ll ever find. The first game, Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was one of the few games I played to 100% completion (including the Donkey Kong DLC) and there was no better high than watching the reveal trailer at Ubisoft’s event back in 2017.
Games like this mean there is something good in the world.
Oh, Elden Ring
Jeff Keighley has been teasing something big on Twitter for so long (years, actually) that everyone thought he was bluffing. The host of The Game Awards put on his own pre-E3 kickoff event and promised something big. Ears perculated and his event had the usual array of already-announced games coinciding with some smaller devs getting the spotlight, which was nice. Then, during the finale of his Summer Games Fest presentation, there was a different tone.
Like a prospector attempting to remain cool over the chunks of gold in his sifting pan, Jeff Keighley couldn’t contain himself.
“So, without further ado,” Jeff said, as though he were about to announce world peace had truly been achieved, “please, sit back and enjoy, this truly spectacular world premiere. It is finally time!”
And then revealed the first gameplay reveal of Elden Ring, a Souls-esque world created by George R.R. Martin (the world-famous Game of Thrones author) and Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of the Dark Souls series. It was lush, glorious, and original in a way that many look-alike Souls games just can’t compete with. It was a celebration of a game long thought to be delayed forever or silently cancelled or killed.
The game is real and coming out January of next year.
Oh, Elden Ring! We are not worthy.
A Rundown of Not Much Everything Else
Xbox and Bethesda had their first join press conference.
It came and it went.
There was Halo: Infinite. And it looks very much like an Xbox 360 Halo game.
Neat.
Square Enix revealed a single-player Guardians of the Galaxy game, proving that the Marvel checkbook has a few more checks left in it.
There’s also a free expansion to the Avengers game launched last year. The Black Panther expansion is free, enticing an audience that abandoned a game long ago to come back for another try. It looks expansive, which is great news for anyone who bought into the original game.
A big surprise of the show was an announcement of a new Final Fantasy game entitled Strangers of Paradise, Final Fantasy Origins. It’s from the team behind Nioh and is described as a gory take on the franchise, which feels like an interesting direction try. The story is stuck in localization hell, meaning references to “Defeating the chaos” probably mean more in Japan than it does translated into English for this E3.
Nintendo Saves E3
And the conference seemed to be over. Nintendo’s show was Tuesday and there was wide-spread skepticism if Nintendo (a company that often sees the dreams of its fans and says, “No, no, no, you’ll like this better…”) could fill the void left by a lack of anything to get excited about.
The answer was yes and the games were announced in plenty.
Kazuya from Tekken is in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (huge!). Mario Golf is on the horizon. A new WarioWare game is coming soon. A new Metroid 2D-game (Metroid Dread) was announced and launches in October. A new Mario Party entry is on its way. And the final announcement was the first gameplay trailer for Breath of the Wild 2.
And there were smiles on everyone’s lips because we knew, even if it wasn’t the strongest suite of games announced, that Nintendo saved the conference.
Like it or not, this is the power of Nintendo; they can make dreams come true. They may not be your dreams, but there is always a feeling that somebody’s dreams are coming true. This feeling was missing from the rest of the conference.
Microsoft, another company that has the power to make dreams come true, often acts like a political candidate that has forgotten what it means to act like a person. A spokesperson often stands on a platform, smiles, and delivers talking points that are fact-checked and meant to please, but it always comes across as hollow and devoid of humanity. Right now, they are a company so entrenched in numbers and attempting to ‘appear’ like they’ve got the goods, that they have the games that people want, but there isn’t anything in their catalogue that gets everyone excited beyond the next Halo title–and even that beloved franchise is suffering from a lack of care and leadership.
Like it or not, what Nintendo has that no one else can touch (save Sony on a good day) are characters and franchises that people love. Power, hardware, graphical prowess—these mean nothing unless there are great games with lovable characters at the heart of it all.
This isn’t something that can be taught, I think. And, as far as the conference is concerned, something that can be learned, either.
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In Conclusion
I’m excited for games for the final half of the year. This wasn’t the strongest conference, and we’re likely seeing the results of a hindered workflow with Covid restrictions. If that caused a lack of games to appear, then that’s understandable. And maybe there are projects on the backburner that are waiting to see the light of the day at the next conference (likely The Game Awards in December), the ones that need a little more wrench time. If so, great!
I think that was the case for Nintendo for the longest time and look at what they presented this past week. All of their games were announced for the second half of the year, meaning there are some much bigger announcements in the works.
Which means the conference did as it was supposed to do: draw upon the hopes and dreams of consumers eagerly awaiting that next dream that might come true.
Dream on.
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Hoping everyone as well as they can be. You’re not alone out there,
