Alex Birlo on June 18, 2021
Last week we had this year’s E3, and it was – pretty good. So now we will take a look at the most notable games and announcements out of the four days – the ones you absolutely have to know about!
Going through the games, I will try to stick with the order in which they were announced.
And we shall start with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
The footage that we saw was spectacular, reminding us of what the “Snowdrop” engine is capable of.
Of course, it still was not gameplay, but a curated trailer of some beautiful environments and the fauna of Pandora. So I am not too excited, but it is obvious they will be leaning heavily on the visual beauty of the planet.
As far as we know, it is going to be an open world game, made by Ubisoft – make your own conclusions.
The game is scheduled for a 2022 release, and will be for the next-gen consoles, PC, Stadia, and Amazon’s console Luna.
We also saw some more of Far Cry 6.
The game that is “not political” but is, and that is set “not in Cuba” but again – it totally is.
It looks cool, it looks fun. In some of the footage it looks good and in some it looks outdated – such is the fate of cross-generational games.
The fact that it will be releasing not only on next-gen and PC, but also on old-gen, has its effect on the visuals and quality of facial capture.
But nevertheless, the setting is fresh yet familiar, and the dynamic between the new villain and his son is interesting. And it was shown in a short snippet of a cinematic from somewhere at the beginning of the game.
The trailer reads “from the award-winning creators of Skyrim &Fallout 4. A brand-new universe, 25 years in the making” and that was when Bethesda Game Studios had finally shown us some Starfield!
Okay, a bit too epic of an introduction for what is essentially another cinematic trailer, that explains nothing, but pretends that the “in-game footage” watermark will convince us that the final game will look anything like what we see.
We saw a short trailer of an astronaut boarding a cool spaceship, loading up his mecha onboard and starting the engines – that’s it.
But we did get a very specific release date – 11.11.2022. And it will be a next-gen Xbox and PC exclusive, available through their Xbox Game Pass.
But to be honest, I am still excited about this game.
Next, I must say that I absolutely loved the “hilariously cool” trailer for The Outer Worlds 2.
The game that showed all of us that there are still people who want us to experience old-school “Bethesda RPG” type games, that are actually solid and without microtransactions.
The trailer itself is pointless. Its only purpose is to announce that they are working on a second game, and the deep background voice of the narrator pokes fun at that very fact during the entire trailer.
It is, hands down, the most impressive racing game I saw. Both the car physics and the visuals are amazing, and all rendered in a beautiful, almost photo-realistic, open world.
The Horizon festival this time will be in Mexico, the player’s character will be voiced, and it comes on November 9th this year!
This year, “343 Industries” had to make up for how previously they failed to impress people with their new “big-gun” entry in the legendary series.
They showed a short sequence of, actually pretty cool, cinematics that set up the mood and introduce the new AI that will be with Master Chief instead of Cortana.
And then they promptly switched to talking about the multiplayer!
Of course, it might not look as advanced and epic as the new Battlefield 2042, but it does not have to.
Halo multiplayer is about being that special “Halo memory” for so many people, for whom this was their first multiplayer game.
It’s about upholding the tradition and trying to stay up to date.
So first of all, they want to make the multiplayer of Halo Infinite its own separate experience entirely. It will be separate and free-to-play.
It will work like a live service game, with seasons and content updates.
Then I would also like to point out how interesting is their handling of the battle-pass, for example.
It is one of the ways to unlock customization, and by the way it is crazy in this game.
When you buy it – it does not expire! You can keep working on it even when a new one is introduced.
What’s more, you can always buy all previous battle-pass no matter what is the current one. And you can choose towards which of the passes you own, you want to put your progression points!
For all the specifics, I would recommend to go and watch the full 12 minutes of breakdown that the developers had on the new features and functions.
But in short, one of them said it perfectly “It’s just this beautiful slice of sci-fi chaos” and I have no better way to describe how it looked.
And of course, the single-player game and this new multiplayer are going to launch this year’s holiday 2021.
What can I say – I am biased as hell!
Since I was a kid and played the original games, the mystery of the Chernobyl exclusion zone presented such an interesting concept and setting that it was hard not to fall in love with the franchise.
I played the games, I had a collection of the books, and I am happy, more than I can express, that they are making a new game. And one that looks so good.
They showed a trailer with some cutscenes and HUD-less gameplay.
There is nothing to really tell about it, just go check it out for yourself.
I also must talk about Square Enix’s Guardians of the Galaxy game.
First thing first, they showed gameplay and I liked it!
It’s not the most polished – yes. But it is dynamic and the characters are not just copy-pasted from the marvel cinematic universe, but are their own and are actually more faithful to the comic books.
I had a few giggles just during the trailer, and I loved the dynamics between the characters.
The game appears to have some exploration, RPG systems like gear and customization and some story defining choices.
Now I have high hopes for the game, and I am probably going to be disappointed, but no one can stop me!
And by the way, the game comes out on the 26th of October this year.
Nintendo were the ones to close off this year’s E3 with some existing stuff, and they handled it well.
One of the two big things for me was the trailer for “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2” that they finally showed.
From what we could see, it is more of the same stuff we loved in the previous game, but with loads of twists and changes to almost every aspect of the game.
The world has more verticality, which brings about a bunch of new ways to traverse and explore the world.
Link has something with his hand and appears to have a prosthetic limb, that allows him to cast magic.
And the release of the game will be somewhere next year in 2022.
Finally, after so long, they have decided to make a modern installment in the series.
Using everything that made Metroid more accessible in “Metroid: Samus Returns” and just building a new game on it.
Some cool new 2D traversal ideas, with some better looking 3D level backgrounds, adding some combat mechanics, gear upgrades and cutscenes.
There is a whole 24 minutes gameplay demonstration of it. So you can go and treat yourself to some good time with a game I am sure many are extremely excited to play.
The game comes out on October 8th this year!
