E3 Wrap: Thursday

I might not be lucky enough to be over in Los Angeles like some of the Stevivor team, but I’m still sweating every little bit of E3 information and will be wrapping up the days news and events throughout the week. 

After a blur of news for three days straight the second day of the E3 show floor offers a relative calm for those of us not over there in the thick of things. We get to kick back and read hands on impressions, watch trailers and gameplay footage and listen to podcasts where minutiae are detailed for everything playable at the show. Meanwhile those on the ground at E3 are pushing the limits of physical and mental fatigue, as well as liver functionality. Today I’ll take the opportunity to look into more detail some of the biggest news coming out of E3 this year. But first, the news.

Shenmue 3 continues to be a talking point as Sony admits to funding the game while Yu Suzuki plays coy about exactly where all the rest of his external funding is coming from. While I don’t think anything dodgy is going on here I think Sony has been exposed as using Kickstarter to drum up marketing for the game, trying to drive fan frenzy with a crowdfunding campaign for a game that probably didn’t need it. Of interest is how much discussion focuses on the original budget for Shenmue, some $47 million USD although that was over five or more years as the game transitioned from Saturn to Dreamcast. Today Shenmue could be made for significantly less, but expectations are high and there is no way crowdfunding could pull together anywhere close to what would be a reasonable budget for Shenmue 3. The truth will eventually leak out and for fans of the series it won’t matter, the Kickstarter has soared over $3 million funded with stretch goals already planned out to $5 million.

Sony has a few more games coming to the PS4, notably a Harmonix developed Project Morpheus visualiser, a confirmation of the Quantic Dreams PS3 adventures Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls for PS4 as well as a port of Kerbal Space Program. The latter is particularly interesting, for a game that benefits heavily from mods I wonder if the console version of Kerbal will be adjusted to better suit the control scheme.

Speaking of Harmonix there were rumours of the Rock Band 4 instrument pricing that weren’t particularly encouraging. Aside from an assured shortage of hardware that Harmonix are already apologising for, the full band kit will set you back $250USD, nearly $100 more than the last full band set. I shudder to think what that will be in Australian dollars, if we even get the hardware at all. I once paid about $450 AUD to import the original Rock Band and instruments, I fear I might be slogged that once again to play on current-gen. At least the game is good from all reports at E3 thus far.

I got the chance to test out the Xbox One backwards compatibility features, which thankfully work as advertised. Upon inserting an Xbox 360 disc into the Xbox One it triggers a download of the game which is then played off the hard drive. Even Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, my test game, was a hefty 5.2 GB download which scarcely seemed worth it. I’ll attempt to test any possible region locking and other games over the next few days. Sony had their say on backwards compatibility, they don’t think it is very important. Sounds like they won’t be offering it on PS4 any time soon, focusing instead on selling you those games again using the Playstation Now service.

Hololens continues to make a strong impression, including on our Friendly Fire Show cast. The Minecraft and Halo demos are drawing praise across the board, though gameplay functions for the augmented reality device still seem thin on the ground. Oculus and VR drew the same kind of breathless praise when it was debuted a few years ago and we still haven’t got a firm idea on just how successful VR will be, but this is a good start for Microsoft’s unique headset. I hope to get a chance to try it soon.

Sony confirmed that Nathan Drake’s storyline will end with Uncharted 4, which is also drawing praise for having an even more exciting and interesting demo behind closed doors than what was shown at the Sony press conference. There is a lot riding on Uncharted 4 for Sony, it is their next flagship release and it will need to hold up the first party lineup for some time as most of the PS4 announcements at E3 are late 2016 games, or beyond. Sony hasn’t needed exclusives so far to dominate the sales war but sooner or later gamers will be tempted by the larger Xbox One exclusive library, Uncharted 4 will go some way to holding that back.

Microsoft demonstrated their new Xbox One interface, due at the end of the year, as well as Cortana for Xbox One. It’s hard to say much about a UX update that you don’t get hands on with, but no surprises that it brings the Xbox One closer to Windows 10 in look and layout.

It sounds like the Final Fantasy VII remake may take some liberties with the story, with Tetsuya Nomura confirming they would like to differentiate the remake from the HD remaster available on PC and eventually PS4. The combat system will probably get an overhaul though I hope they keep the core of materia, it was one of my favourite Final Fantasy combat systems. We’ll just have to have faith for now that they know what is best.

Dark Souls 3 has been developed in parallel with Bloodborne, with the PS4 exclusive’s team not having much to do with the third Dark Souls game.

I’m starting to get excited about Rory McIlroy’s PGA Tour, as a fan of golf games I’m liking that this has been built from the ground up and features a variety of swing mechanics. It looks gorgeous and is out next month  I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Day Z is getting single player, something I struggle to think anybody would have asked for. The whole appeal of Day Z is the “man’s inhumanity to man” aspect of interaction, take that away and you just have a buggy zombie survival game.

Of course, Stevivor got a few more hands on impressions up today, including Mighty No. 9 and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. You can also listen to the latest Friendly Fire Show for more details. Join us again tomorrow as we close out the show and squeeze out whatever news remains to be found in E3 2015.