E3 2018: SE Press Conference Impressions

SE starts their conference off with a trailer for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.  It showed Lara and Jona in a plane that's crashing, breaking apart in the air. Daniel Chaeyer-Bisson, game director, talks about the game a little bit.  The central theme is preventing a Mayan apocalypse and the game takes place in a jungle. I saw Lara shooting some hallucinatory arrow into a guard that caused him to shoot his teammates.  There's also a new rope takedown that involved her swinging from a tree and strangling the guard with the rope. There will be crafting molotov cocktails and it looks like there will be a bigger focus on stealth combat. I did notice that the sound is fantastic.  Lots of ambient jungle noises. There's going to be new grappling moves and we'll see the return of underwater swimming and exploration. I'm excited for that as well as apprehensive, because underwater levels in Tomb Riader games always made me nervous.  The HUB will be the largest yet and will include a hidden city. There will also be more tombs and they'll be deadlier.

Next up is a trailer for FFXIV: Stormblood for the Under the Moonlight patch 4.3. It turns out to be for a Monster Hunter World crossover event coming out in Summer 2018. I never cared for crossover events because they always disrupt the immersion of the universe.  

There was another trailer for Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. This one focused on how the kid making his costume and using his imaginary powers.  Two developers come out to talk about the game, but didn't really say much, just how it's loosely connected to the Life is Strange universe.  Again, free to download on June 26th. 

The next trailer looked to be for the next Dragon Quest game. It contained a lot of flashy action and beautiful cell-shaded style graphics.  Indeed, it was for Dragons Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age.  Moment of confession: I never played a Dragon Quest game... 

A new trailer began playing and started off symbols forming and a timeline spanning across multiple ages. It ended with a knight striking his enemy but the enemy countered and then knight ended updying. Babylon's Fall is the title and the PlatinumGames logo followed.  That perked up my ears.

The next trailer was a quick one, an announcement for Nier Automata for Xbox One on June 26th.

Then we had a quick trailer for Octopath Traveler for the Switch. It showed off some beautiful handrawn images.  I played the demo, and I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm really disappointed that they didn't bother to spend much time talking about this particular title. 

Finally, we have the trailer for Just Cause 4, and it looks FANTASTIC!  We see the return of Rico Rodriguez and it takes place in South America in a nation called Solis.  I noticed a Mayan temple. The new villain is Gabriella, leader of the Black Hand.  There's going to be extreme weather such as tornadoes, lightning, sand storms and blizzards. The jetpack and glide suit will return. There's going to be new vehicles such as bulldozers and wrecking balls, microjets and jet skis. Handling has also been overhauled.  The grapple will now be fully customizable with more tethers and new air lifters. Enemies will now be more intelligent with more unique abilities. The game will also run on a completely new Apex engine and will be released on December 4th. 

Then we have a mysterious trailer being shown where a bunch of breaking glass begins to forming a a silhouette of a figure. Then there was some live action film showing the figure wearing a hood as he walked into an ally and came across some thugs.  They threatened him, but then the figure motions he can't hear.  Then, it goes into actual gameplay and shows the figure fighting them.  But then I wonder, did what I just see earlier actually live action, or really amazing pre-rendered graphics.  SE is known for that after all.  The Quiet Man is revealed to be the title and more will come in August.  I have to admit, I'm pretty intrigued by this one. 

The conference concludes with the same trailer for Kingdom Hearts III that was shown at the MS conference. 

I kind of wonder why SE even bothered with a conference at all.  The run time was exactly 30 minutes and it felt more like a Nintendo Direct, but a lot more impersonal. There was no presenter, no stage presence or demos.  Just trailer after trailer with an occasional video or two from developers.  Starting it out with Tomb Raider was a good call, but honestly, what was actually shown in the video wasn't that groundbreaking.  The quick trailer they showed at the end of their segment showed off a lot more interesting stuff, but was glossed over so quickly.  They should have done a much better job showcasing one of their biggest games of the year.

I'm actually really ticked off that they had such a short trailer for Octopath Traveler.  That's my most anticipated game this year from their camp. I get that it comes out next month, but they could have spent a couple minutes on their game, especially since it's a Switch exclusive.  They'll probably show more at Nintendo's show, but then again, it's THEIR game in THEIR show. They didn't even bother to show an alternate version of the Kingdom Hearts III trailer they showed at the MS conference.  I don't really care about the franchise, but I know a lot of people tuned into this show precisely for more information about this game.  The only thing that kept me giving this show an F is Just Cause 4.  They did go into more detail about the game and it got my hype needle ticking past the meter, but I would REALLY have loved a stage demo.  

Overall Rating: D-