Tuesday, June 14, 2016

E3 2016: Nintendo Conference

Well, it doesn't sound like their typical conference.  There's also no Nintendo Direct briefing for E3 this year... Their event is called Treehouse Live.  It starts out with Reggie Fils-Aime as he takes a moment of silence for the victims of Orlando, and apparently, Christina Grimmie was scheduled to appear to perform at their booth.  So sad...

Now, Reggie addresses us that every show at E3 is different.  He talks about how the booths are still being prepped, which I find funny, because the only playable one will be Zelda.  He rattles off some tidbits about the history of Zelda, and now shows off a trailer for the new Zelda.  Right away, there is no doubt that this will be the most beautiful and stunning Zelda Nintendo has made.  The graphics and style are simply wonderful. It shows Link jumping off a cliff parachuting down, running through a forest, riding a horse across a bridge, mountain climbing, chopping down a tree to use a bridge, jumping into water, swimming, shooting enemies with arrows, cooking, making blocks out of water.  So much being shown, I can't even keep up.  Combat looks typical Zelda.  The trailer ends with light shining on the Master Sword set in stone.  The game's title will be called Breath of the Wild.

He announces Pokemon Sun and Moon available on November 18, talks about new regions and characters.  He introduces some people from the Pokemon team to play the first live demo for Pokemon Sun and Moon, or I thought.  There's five people sitting talking about the history of the franchise.  This is boring me.  They show some footage from the two games and well, it's Pokemon.  I will be honest and say that I've never played a Pokemon game before, so this honestly has no appeal for me.  Back to talking, they ask the producers questions, and it has to be translated into Japanese, he answers and it  has to be translated back into English.  I just don't care right now.  This is exactly how I feel at this moment.


I know for Pokemon fans, this is good news.  They are talking about the games a lot, but for people with no interest in Pokemon games... they're talking about the games a lot.  I'm going to play some Miitomo while they keep talking. Ok, finished playing Miitomo, ate breakfast and they're STILL talking!  This has been going on for like 25 minutes now!  MOVE ON!  

Crap... I got so bored, I started doing other things and forgot to check back on the "conference".  Finally!  Zelda is being shown.  I'm watching him going through some kind of cave. There's all this rune-like technology everywhere.  Oh, and Link now has a jumping ability for the first time!  Way to catch up with a basic gameplay feature, Nintendo!  He's in an area now called The Great Plateau, which will be the only playable area during the show.  They're showing off a panoramic view of the world and it looks so incredible.  It appears that any place you see you can eventually reach.  He's climbing a mountain right now gathering mushrooms.  Climbing has a stamina gauge, He's now climbing a tree and gathering apples.  

One thing I've noticed is the interface appears to be devoid of any Zelda style.  The text balloons, the fonts, even the world map looks modern and bland.  He picked up a branch that was on fire and set some brush on fire with it.  I'm sure there will be puzzle solving involved with that.  Link's picked up an ax now and is chopping up trees into firewood.  There's going to be a lot of gathering involved.  A creature called a korok has appeared, looks like a water and plant creature with a lily pad on its back.  Link has now found the rock with the Master Sword, woops, that was just a rusty sword.  The water looks pretty good.  He's fighting some enemies with his newfound sword now.  He got a pot lid shield off an enemy.  Combat is easily recognizable as Zelda, and it looks like Link can actually pick up and use different weapons from enemies.  That's actually really cool, giving Link some more combat flexibility. 

 He's now reached the Temple of Time.  They're just having him run around it for now.  I hope they have him go in. He's got a club now and is fighting a monster using some kind of slow motion attack called Flurry?  He's found another chest and got some new pants.  It seems like the game's going to have a lot of loot collecting.  There's some kind of broken down robot he's climbing.  I'm guessing that if he goes back in time, they will be alive and kicking.  Some more wandering around and then the demo comes to an end.  I think they goofed and forgot to turn off the time limit.  *slow clap*

Looks like they got the demo up and running again, and now they have to cover some ground again.  Link is moving some explosive barrels around now.  He's laying them down next to each other and throws a club into the fire and then another to set off a chain reaction.  I got a little chuckle out of it.  So, it seems like you'll be able to play around with objects in many different ways just to have some fun wasting time.  They're going to take a break now and return with more exploration. 

Well, I thought they were going to come back, but the feed I was watching on Gamestop ended, so I guess not.  Even so, I wouldn't have much more time to dedicate to them anyway.  I'm just going to wrap this up then.  This wasn't really a conference at all, not even in Nintendo's traditional sense of not being traditional for E3.  I was expecting a normal Nintendo Direct style briefing.  Instead, we got Treehouse Live and pardon my cynicism, but this wasn't a very good move for Nintendo.  It illustrates, at least to me, that Nintendo is sorely lacking in the games department this year.  To not even talk about the NX is a huge missed opportunity, because here you have a system that's launching next year, and you STILL haven't shown a thing about it.  E3 was that venue.  You'll show it in your own way and in your own time, but there was no better opportunity to show it off other than now.  

So, about Zelda.  I'm glad Nintendo's spending so much time showing it off, but at the same time, what does that say, when they dedicate most of E3 to just one game?  Anyway, I have to say I'm excited for this new Zelda, but at the same time I'm a bit hesitant.  The one thing I think might be a problem for some people is the open world.  It's entirely changed the pacing of the more linear Zeldas and people who like that traditional style of gameplay might not enjoy that in the new Zelda.  My concern is just how much worthwhile stuff there is to do in this massive world.  If you never get bored of things you come across, that would be excellent, but if there's a ton of random collecting for things you don't need and doing things that don't serve a purpose, the whole open world will feel like padding.  I'm definitely going to pick it up for the NX, which is a shame, because that still leaves my Wii U without a brand new Zelda since launch.  

Thanks for reading!


No comments:

Post a Comment