Now that another E3's over, it's time for people to gripe about what's wrong with the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, But commenter rpm285sm doesn't understand the all the bitching around the games business' biggest trade show. He saw lots of things to be excited about and wonders at length as to why more folks aren't pumped up.
I don't understand why trash talking E3 or the stuff shown a the show is the new cool thing to do. We saw a lot of really exciting things at this years show but all I'm hearing from gaming outlets is negativity. Kotaku posts an article about this being the worst thing ever, G4 spent all kinds of airtime talking with writers and editors from other gaming outlets about what the big 3 did wrong (yes, I watched the G4 coverage. I have shitty internet, sue me.). You'd think every game was a generic all-brown COD-sequel-knockoff or that the whole show was about new horse armor for sale.
Just off the top of my head we had 3 exciting new games announced: Watch Dogs, Beyond, and Star Wars 1313. All three are brand-new just-announced non-sequel games. All three had impressive visuals. Beyond looks to take the excellent storytelling we saw in Heavy Rain and add engaging combat/controls. 1313 is supposed to be a new and more mature take on Star Wars that involves a part of the universe we haven't seen before or at least haven't seen in a long time. Watch Dogs is a new take on a genre that's been getting stale by adding a near future early cyberpunkish setting from a publisher with an improving track record.
Nintendo showed us more of what the Wii U will actually look like and how it will be used. Look at what Tycho at Penny Arcade had to say about the Wii U. That's two games at least that have me seriously considering what the Wii U can bring to the table, two games right off the bat that make me feel like I'd have an experience with the Wii U I couldn't have anywhere else and that if I played those games without the unique interface I wouldn't be getting the best version of the game. Not to mention Pikmin 3! How can Nintendo fans not be excited about that? Of course we want all of our favorite franchises to be launch titles but that's just not realistic. We're seeing strong third party support early for the Wii U which I don't remember from the launch of the Wii. Maybe Nintendo learned something there.
We saw awesome new tech from both SquareEnix and Epic to power the next generation of games. SE isn't licensing the tech to anyone but have we all forgotten that they bought Eidos? That means we can count Hitman, Tomb Raider, and Deus Ex as potential users of this new engine along with all the other franchises Eidos had and anything new to come from western SE devs. It's not like this is an engine just for Final Fantasy. And Unreal 4? Yeah, it wasn't flashy but if you know much about games you should be excited by all the new things they can do with the tech. They're already able to do things with it they never could before and able to iterate faster. And we're still at least a year away from any game being released with that tech so there'll be more improvements made the the engine by Epic before we ever get to play with it.
I'm not saying this was the greatest E3 of all time or that any of the things we saw there represent the best we've ever seen from gaming but there sure as hell was stuff to be excited about. I enjoyed watching the coverage this year, I saw things I'll be looking forward to for the next few years. When did everyone get so jaded with the industry?
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