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E3 2019 in Review

Lily "Lovely" Bones

The conferences have finished and all (or most) of the news is in. While everyone in California is still enjoying the show floor or resting afterward, those of us around the rest of the world can take a breath and review everything we’ve learned. If there’s something you missed in the flurry of announcements over the last week period, you’ll find it here!

This is an assembly of all major news that’s released across all platforms and publishers, and will provide a space for final discussions among the community here on The Avocado. For completeness and organization, information will be divided by date and start prior to E3’s beginning with the Pokemon Sword and Shield Direct from Wednesday June 5th, continuing with the start of E3 during last weekend, and finishing with the Nintendo Direct from Tuesday June 11th.

Due to sheer amount of text present here, I will be breaking up the major sections with cool new art from upcoming Nintendo games, while only linking trailers to open in new tabs so as to not completely overwhelm you lovely readers. All images will be sourced with credit as always and information will be backed with external sources where appropriate.

Wednesday through Saturday

Pokemon Sword and Shield is receiving a global simultaneous release on November 15, 2019, including a specialized limited edition two-pack of the games. The two legendaries on the covers for Generation VIII are a pair of wolves called Zacian and Zamazenta. The games will feature local and online multiplayer in the massive free-roamed Wild Area, where players can control their free camera and work together in four-player Raid Battles. Several other new Pokemon were unveiled with a focus on the Dynamax battle feature, where Pokemon grow to many times their normal size for three turns of a battle. This feature is prominently displayed during both gym battles and raid battles.

Google Stadia is “powered by the best of Google”, releasing in November (no specified date yet) across 14 countries, all of which are North American or European.1United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. I feel like Yakko Warner. The only way to play Stadia at launch will be purchasing the $130 Founder’s Edition package, which includes a Chromecast Ultra to run the streaming to a TV, a controller, and a three-month subscription to the $10 subscription service, Stadia Pro. The free tier of the service won’t start until sometime in 2020. The majority of the service’s game lineup at this time is still older games from Bethesda, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and others. Upcoming titles featured include Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein Youngblood, and Borderlands 3,2the last of which would be poison to include if this were a sane world or a moral industry as well as newly announced titles like Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 (will also be on PC), two indie exclusives called Get Packed and Gylt, and a Diablo-like Darksiders spinoff also releasing on Switch.

Google says it plans to make additional announcements regarding Stadia games, referring to the above list as “the beginning” of its launch portfolio. The full list so far is here, with 2019 and unreleased games in bold: 3Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – Ubisoft, Baldur’s Gate 3 – Larian Studios, Borderlands 3 – 2K, The Crew 2 – Ubisoft, Darksiders Genesis – THQ Nordic, Destiny 2 – Bungie, Doom and Doom Eternal – Bethesda Softworks, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 – Bandai Namco, (Not FighterZ???) The Elder Scrolls Online – Bethesda Softworks, Farming Simulator 19 – Giants Software, Final Fantasy 15 – Square Enix, Football Manager – Sega, Get Packed – Coatsink, GRID – Codemasters, Gylt – Tequila Works, Just Dance – Ubisoft, Metro Exodus – Deep Silver, Mortal Kombat 11 – Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, NBA 2K, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid – nWay Games, Rage 2 – Bethesda Softworks, Rise of the Tomb Raider – Square Enix, Samurai Shodown – SNK, Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Square Enix, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint – Ubisoft, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 – Ubisoft, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition – Square Enix, Thumper – Drool, Trials Rising – Ubisoft, Wolfenstein: Youngblood – Bethesda Softworks. Their presentation makes no acknowledgment of the use of data caps by companies like Comcast and how they’d affect using this service. In fact, when asked about them elsewhere, Google representatives have insisted that caps will simply be raised or removed at their will.

All of this news came in the same week as Google in their management over Youtube was able to get headlines to run “Youtube is removing thousands of nazi channels” without administering any actual consequences to the numerous and most powerful leaders of far-right discourse on the site, including men like Steven Crowder who lead extended homophobic and racist harassment campaigns while profiting off the spread of misinformation. Google and Youtube will not actually be punishing these individuals because the damage to the profits they make from their videos would be too great, while at the same time they continue to flag and demonetize any queer Youtubers whose content dares to be so provocative and radical as to…acknowledge trans people, for example. Furthermore, their content removal algorithms are affecting responsible journalists, like Ford Fischer, and educators and activists, because their work too is confrontational in a way that is actually positive, but these algorithms can’t take context into account. Nazis and neo-cons are being taught that their actions will continue to have no consequences, and they can evade these algorithms to avoid even that level of scrutiny, while good working people of marginalized identities and otherwise will continue to suffer and lose their livelihoods because they can’t weasel their way out of doing their jobs right.

EA spent two and a half to three hours on what is very little actual information. After some obligatory fawning from Kinda Funny‘s Greg Miller while discussing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a roughly 14-minute gameplay demo played, which demonstrated how the player character will use the Force in both combat sequences, including slowing down his enemies or speeding up his own movement, and interaction/navigation of the environment in Uncharted/Tomb Raider-esque adventure platforming sequences. It showed off prestige guest actor Forest Whitaker returning as his character from Rogue One and The Clone Wars, to essentially be the Navi to this redheaded Link, and finally ended with a quick montage of the character in other combat situations, including facing off with an AT-ST firing at him from above. Even with this second reveal, nothing has really been seen to justify why this character needed to be mo-capped to a specific actor, rather than be customizable and able to provide exciting representation for a variety of players.

Apex Legends Season 2 was shown off next, with a new gun, a new support character named Wattson, and the undefined suggestion of a new gameplay mode. Battlefield V showed off all of its updates for the rest of the year, including several new multiplayer maps, the implementation of private matches in September, and a theming around the Pacific front for the next set of updates. With the next hour dedicated to their sports games, FIFA 20, which will be released on September 27th for its non-Switch platforms, revealed its expansive career mode entitled Volta Football, which features extensive customization and story mode among other excitements. FIFA 20 for Switch was confirmed without a release date and with the caveat that is like its predecessors a Legacy Edition, suggesting a reskin without the most recent game’s new features. Madden NFL 20 also showed off a new career campaign, called Face of the Franchise, introduced by the requisite latest college athlete to be exploited by this corporation, and what’s really exciting about this mode is how it is an actual simulation of the precipitously painful and disappointing experiences that most college athletes go through!

EA Play concluded with the reveal of a Sims 4 expansion entitled Island Life, which will release for computers on June 21st and consoles on July 16th. The expansion provides a variety of new tropical activities for Sims to experience on the island of Sulani. That is everything EA showed on Saturday over the course of three hours, longer than every other conference. They even actually announced a few new indies in an evening press release, but those simply couldn’t fit into the three hour show dedicated to three games that are already out, two game series on a yearly cycle, and Star Wars.

The Splatoon 2 World Championship ended with a brief trailer for the very final Splatfest, AKA Final Fest: Splatocalypse. The three day event, from July 18 to July 21st, and the 5.0 patch released immediately afterwards, will be the final pieces of post-release support for Splatoon 2, coming two whole years after its launch in 2017. Patch 5.0 will make every single Splatfest map permanently available for use in online multiplayer.

Credit: Junkee

Sunday

Microsoft had a whopping one hour and 45 minute presentation featuring dozens of games and closing out with a tease for their obscenely overpowered next-gen hardware, code named Project Scarlet, which will launch with Halo: Infinite during the 2020 holiday season. Here’s just a quick list of everything that was presented and revealed:

Credit: mxdwn

Bethesda generously decided to give their best efforts to make Devolver Digital’s parody show from later that Sunday redundant with the sheer hubris and absurdism on display. We all knew to expect it, but that didn’t make the sheer excess of back-patting and “cute” self-awareness from Todd Howard that the conference’s opening was devoted to any easier to stomach. This atmosphere continued throughout the conference with three separate intermissions for fan and employee testimonials speaking to the positive impact Bethesda has on them. I do relatively trust these people’s sincerity and positivity, but that doesn’t render the context in which they’re being used any less cynical or exploitative. Before leaving, Howard promised new IP would be announced and a deep dive for Doom Eternal, and went ahead with throwing out that The Elder Scrolls: Blades, a notoriously predatory mobile game, was receiving a shadowdropped update and would be released on Switch this Fall. Oh, and let’s not forget that repeatedly throughout this conference, Bethesda took credit for what Id Software accomplished in the 90s, many years before they owned that studio, of innovating in the first-person shooter genre.

Devolver Digital successfully hindered Bethesda’s efforts to sabotage their third E3 conference with a very exciting set of announcements paired to the “Devolver Direct” and the unveiling of a new corporate villain to oppose and torment beloved icon Nina Struthers.

First up was Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout for PS4 and PC in early 2020, a colorful and cartoony indie battle royale with a twist: death comes not from other players but the dangers of the environment they are all traversing. 

Devolver Bootleg was revealed to be Available Now exclusively on Steam, serving as a parody of the kind of games that clutter Steam by providing an eight-in-one game assembly based on different classic Devolver titles, such as Enter the Gun-Dungeon. 

Continuing the tradition of graphic, cartoony, staged violence in their E3 conferences,  Carrion by Phobia Game Studio, was first revealed with a rampaging monstrous puppet before gameplay was also shown. It’s a side-scrolling pixel art horror game and possible Metroidvania set for the extra vague “PC and Console in 2020”, wherein the player is a rampaging tentacle monster eliminating threats to its disturbing existence.

The June 20th release date trailer for dynamic side-scrolling shooter My Friend Pedro, already highlighted by Nintendo a week earlier, was also shown. As the conference collapsed in typical heightened fashion, two more big announcements snuck in: a free expansion for The Messenger entitled Picnic Panic is available on all platforms as of July 11th, and a $5000 original light-gun arcade cabinet game based on Enter the Gungeon, House of the Gun-dead, blew this grew-up-on-lightgun-games young woman’s mind. It will be distributed to arcades in early 2020 and is available to be pre-ordered for private ownership sometime soon.

Finally, Square Enix pulled a surprise on Sunday night by posting a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake complete with the release date of March 3rd 2020. With still no formal indication of the previously stated episodic structure, but also still no footage of the game from beyond the very beginning, this announcement only raised further questions for many fans.

Credit: NintendoLife

Monday

Some highlights from the PC Gaming Show on Monday morning include: a new gameplay trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and an interview with some of the developers, which renewed the promise of an early 2020 release; indie publisher Chucklefish revealing a new spacefaring management game called Starmancer; and the first trailer for the long-awaited Evil Genius 2.

Some highlights of the Limited Run Games conference streamed from their North Carolina office include: A late 2019 Night in the Woods release for both Switch and PS4, Supergiant Games’ Transistor, the launch of a 3DS Limited Run line starting with the Atooi Collection of five eShop titles on one cartridge, the 3D version of Myst for Switch, a Collector’s Edition of legendary vaporware Shenmue 3, currently scheduled for November, and finally a fuckoff-huge assembly of collector’s edition rereleases of classic Star Wars games, as well as several Monkey Island titles, through a partnership with Lucasarts. The full list for that is here:6The Secret of Monkey Island, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge, The Curse of Monkey Island, Star Wars (NES, Game Boy), Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (PS2/PS4), Star Wars: Dark Forces (PC), Star Wars Episode I: Racer (PC, N64), Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (NES, Game Boy), Star Wars: Jedi Knight (PC), Star Wars Jedi Knight 2 – Jedi Outcast (PC), Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (PC), Star Wars: Racer Revenge (PS4), Star Wars: Rebel Assault (PC), Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (PC, N64), Star Wars: TIE Fighter (PC), Star Wars: X-Wing (PC) The primary focus of these releases will be new printings for the games’ original platforms, but additional modern console porting may be announced down the line.

Ubisoft opened with a brief orchestral performance of pieces from the Assassins’ Creed series before quickly shifting into the first new title, Watch Dogs: Legion, which was informally announced by a Kotaku report after Amazon accidentally leaked the game last week. Releasing on March 6th 2020, Legion‘s presentation intermixed trailer and gameplay footage to establish the game’s setting of a London ravaged by government neglect, dangerous drones, and chaotic public unrest in the wake of Brexit. It also demonstrated how the previously reported NPC recruitment and resistance mechanics can play out in real time,7The actual recruitment part was largely relegated to coverage outside the conference’s livestream, where it’s suggested that recruitment tactics/methodology can be variable based on the profile of the person targeted, such as blackmail being necessary in some cases. as one character died during a shootout and the player quickly shifted over to a new character elsewhere in the environment to salvage the halted mission. Several character profiles and specialties were shown off, including espionage, martial arts, and the immediate fan-favorite, an ex-assassin grandma. The promise of a large cast of consistently unique characters with varying mechanics is going to be a tall order to match up, especially considering the trailer’s frequent displays of gunplay over other gameplay types. It’s already been confirmed by developers that there is a set list of character profiles with different variables that will be minutely adjusted for distribution across the wider population of the game’s digital city. The only question is just how well that works in practice.

Although the game’s creative director Clint Hocking has a decent pedigree (Far Cry 2 and what is perhaps the consensus best Splinter Cell, Chaos Theory), and a particular earnestness towards the messaging in his game, what’s been seen in both the game’s footage and his comments during this part of the conference suggest a very clumsy and unsophisticated grasp of the politics he’s trying to explore. He definitely thinks Brexit will and has hurt the UK’s populace, and he’s correct in that, but he seems to lack a sense of vision as for how exactly the current political state led to the dire circumstances the game portrays. How and why would the British government, which has seen rapid turnaround in leadership as the Conservative Party continually strives and fails to complete their EU withdrawal negotiations, simply abandon their posts, and how does that result in birds being replaced with robots? And does Hocking have any grasp of how Brexit is part of a much broader global pattern of far-right fascist powers and the catastrophic consequences of their actions, that its local impact reaches far beyond the single city of London, and that the consequences that have already occurred are far more insidious than any hypothetical cartoonish anarchy state?

On that note, here’s a quick track record of other recent political messages to come out of Ubisoft: During an interview last week, Ubisoft executive Tommy Francois expressed how the company would continue to remain committed to their convictions, convictions that both-sides-ism, trying to be as apolitical as possible, and avoiding messages entirely are the key virtues to what make their games more mature than the competition. Francois is not the first individual from high up in the company to claim and defend an apolitical quality to their products. It’s easy to see how such a perspective has given us such stories and choices as The Division‘s “government agents must massacre homeless people and escaped prisoners for the greater good,” and Far Cry 5 designing white religious fanatic villains to not only be as removed from any real-world ideology as possible, but even to not have any agency whatsoever. I trust that Clint Hocking is well-meaning in his attempts at social commentary, but I remain deeply skeptical that such a corporate environment as this that his work is being produced in will allow for anything truly radical or meaningful.

Now, as for the rest of the actual presentation:

Square Enix unsurprisingly dedicated a large amount of their conference, the highly coveted slot occupied by Sony in previous years, to the extensive Final Fantasy franchise.

Credit: NintendoLife

In a few self-contained announcements, Untitled Goose Game was announced to be a temporary Epic Store exclusive for its PC launch in order to secure the studio resources for future games, and Microsoft revealed the final lineup of games to be made backwards compatible for the Xbox One, before resources are fully moved over to focusing on backwards compatibility for Project Scarlett. The final original Xbox games to soon be compatible with Xbox One and available on its store are: Armed and Dangerous, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy,  Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, and the first four Splinter Cell titles, up to Double Agent. The final Xbox 360 games are:11Asura’s Wrath, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Enchanted Arms, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Far Cry Classic, Far Cry Instincts Predator, Infinite Undiscovery, Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands, Skate, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Syndicate, Too Human, Unreal Tournament III, with Too Human being available for no charge in accordance with the Silicon Knights court ruling. Several Rare titles available individually and as part of Rare Replay are also confirmed to be receiving an upresing for playing on the Xbox One X, namely all three console Banjo-Kazooie games, Kameo, Perfect Dark and Perfect Dark Zero, and the two main Viva Piñata games.

Tuesday/Nintendo

That’s all for our 2019 E3 Roundup! Thank you so much everyone for reading! What did you think of this year? What were some of your favorite and least favorite moments? The best and worst conferences? How bad did Sony fuck up by holding out, even if it was just going to be updates on games they’d already shown the last couple years and the PS5 wasn’t ready for a full show yet? What was your personal total positive surprise moment, AKA “What?! Hell yeah! What!?”18Credit to Polygon’s Brian David Gilbert

For those of you that regularly follow my writings, this might be of interest to you19Release Schedule into Autumn: End of June – Blinx 2, July – Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom/Taz Wanted, Early August – Super Mario Galaxy, Late August – Vexx and the End of Acclaim, and throughout Autumn – Banjo-Kazooie, Chrono Trigger, and the Oddworld Historia!

A whole lot of time and effort goes into making my work here possible. Please show your support however you can to help keep this going, whether that means sharing this articles wherever and to whomever there might be interest, or for those able to, donating to my Patreon dedicated specifically to these writings, which is linked here: https://www.patreon.com/lilytina

Credit: BusinessInsider
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