The major E3 press conferences are over, and the rain of game announcements has abated. Nintendo all did their thing. It’s up to us to sort through the rubble.
Among the dozens of hype reels, hardware breakdowns, marketing buzzwords and game announcements, a few things stood out. If you don’t have a lot of time and just want to know about the absolute biggest stuff from E3, this post is for you.
In no particular order, here are the six biggest announcements from E3 2017:
1. Nintendo Is Making Two Metroid Games.
It’s been ages since Nintendo made a proper Metroid game, so of course they turned up with not one but two of them. We got an announcement of Metroid Prime 4 that was pretty much just that: a title placard with no release date or additional info. Still pretty cool. We also learned about Metroid: Samus Returns, a side-scrolling 3DS game that will be out in September. That one sounds great, and best of all, we’ll be able to play it in a few months.
Read about everything else Nintendo showed here.
2. The Xbox One X Costs $649.
We already knew what the new Xbox’s specs would be, but we didn’t know the name or the price. Turns out the name is “Xbox One X,” and the price is $US499 ($649 in Australia). That’s a lot of money to pay for a console that doesn’t have any games that aren’t also on PC, and the name is confusing, too. The console itself looks nice enough, but we’re not yet convinced anyone will need to buy it, particularly given that Microsoft has followed Sony’s (questionable) lead by talking about 4K resolution rather than improved performance and higher frame-rates. Check out Stephen’s take on the new console here.
Read about everything else Microsoft showed here.
3. Sony Is Remaking Shadow Of The Colossus For PS4.
Most of what Sony showed at their press conference was games they showed last year, but one stood out: Bluepoint’s remake of Shadow of the Colossus, which will be out for PS4 in 2018. This is no mere remaster; this is a full-on remake, loaded with all the visual bells and whistles you’d expect on a modern console. Shadow of the Colossus is widely held up as one of the greatest video games of all time, so there’s no reason to think the remake won’t also be good.
Read about everything else Sony showed here.
4. BioWare’s Anthem Looks Killer.
BioWare announced their new action RPG Anthem at EA’s press conference, but it wasn’t until the Xbox show that we got a good long look at it. The game looks like a third-person Destiny-like online action game, where you and your friends can fly around a huge open world in mech suits, fighting all sorts of monsters. It also looked absurdly pretty, to the point that it will be interesting to go back and watch this demo after the game comes out to see how the two compare. Just based on this video, though, it was easily one of the most impressive games anybody showed this year. They say it will be out in fall 2018, but don’t be too surprised if this one gets at least one major delay.
Read about everything else EA showed here.
5. Monster Hunter Is Coming To Consoles And PC.
The widely-loved action RPG series Monster Hunter is finally making the jump to multi-platform consoles with Monster Hunter World, which got a nifty demo at Sony’s event. This series has primarily been on handhelds, despite having so many elements — open world exploration, loot grinding, co-op monster hunting — that would theoretically work well on consoles. The new game will bring some major changes to the series formula; read more about it here. It will be out in early 2018.
6. Ubisoft Brought Back Beyond Good & Evil 2.
People had started giving up on Beyond Good & Evil 2. Ubisoft had announced the sequel to Michel Ancel’s beloved 2003 game years ago, but it had been missing in action for way too long since then. This year, Ubisoft closed out their press conference with a cranked-up CGI trailer that, yes, ok, was just a CGI trailer, but indicated that the publisher is finally serious about getting BG&E2 out the door.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 will be a prequel set before the first game’s protagonist Jade has been born, which opens the door to all sorts of interesting narrative possibilities. Other details are thin — it sounds like it will have an online component, and like it’s still pretty early in development. It will probably still be a long wait for the finished game, but nice to know it’s alive and kicking.
Read about everything else Ubisoft showed here.
Those were the six big ones, but there there were plenty of other notable games at the show this year. A few more:
- During Bethesda’s press conference, the publisher announced sequels to The Evil Within and Wolfenstein: The New Order, and the second game in particular looks really good.
- Ubisoft showed off Mario + Rabbids, and by some minor miracle, the game actually looks fun.
- Sony showed a technically stunning, lengthy gameplay demo of Insomniac’s PS4 Spider-Man game.
- EA’s co-op prison break game A Way Out seems like it will try some ambitious stuff with two-player storytelling.
- Nintendo also announced that a core Pokémon RPG is coming to Switch at some point far in the future, which isn’t shocking news but is still good to know.
- And Metro fans like me are probably pretty stoked about Metro: Exodus, which made an impressive debut at Microsoft’s show.
The press conferences may be over, but E3 itself is just getting started. We’ll be posting game impressions, interviews, podcasts, videos, and more all throughout the week.
Comments
28 responses to “The Six Biggest Announcements Of E3 2017”
honestly I am worried, Monster Hunter is so close to my heart, they could ruin it and its chance in the west, It already looks like a Horizon Zero dawn reskin, I am happy with the main line MH series and was looking forward to a western double XX in the future, this pretty much confirms we wont get one now…
Disagree. I think it’s likely they’ll exist alongside each other.
Though I am also worried about what MH: World is doing… intrigued, but worried.
I wouldn’t be too concerned regarding the success of the series in the west. Ever since they launched it onto 3ds, the series has gained a significant following over in the west 3u and 4u have sold incredibly well given the series sort of flopped previously.
I’m betting that mh5 is in development for the switch as we speak (there is just no way it isn’t unless capcom don’t want money).
I’m excited for world as I means I get to play on pc but cautious over the sort of mechanic changes they’ll make.
It looks more like Frontier than the core games, and that has been long standing and successful
Overall I think it was a pretty disappointing E3 for me. No big surprises
I agree there weren’t any (or many, I was surprised by No Way out and new Metroid among some other things) big surprises but I still thought it was alright. Lots of good gameplay videos, looks like a massive list of great games on the way to bankrupt me so I’m not really complaining.
The Shadow of the Colossus remake has me extremely excited. I only just finished The Last Guardian two days ago and cannot wait to play a game my friends tout as a masterpiece.
2 new Metroid games that actually have Samus as the playable character? Heck yeah! I’m glad all those rumours about Prime 4 entering development weren’t fake.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 perturbs me slightly. After all this time we finally get a continuation, except it’s not a sequel to a game that ended on a cliffhanger, but a prequel? Fine. Whatever. At least we’re getting something.
My wife is so pissed off at that BG&E trailer. It seems to have missed the whole reason people loved the original and layer a bland teenager tone all over. Like a 12 year old who has just discovered the work f@#k and uses it 3 times in a simple sentence.
Mixed with a bunch of how edgy and cool and I with backflips and stuff, I’m really not sure.
I agree. I’m happy that it’s coming out, but the tone of the trailer left me cold. I can’t connect Beyond Good and Evil to the “f***” word.
Not got a PS2 kicking around? Play it now in its original glory. 😉
I’m pretty excited, the original (along with San Andreas) was one of those EoL PS2 games that really squeezed the last drops of performance out of the PS2. I’ll have to do a side-by-side PS2/PS3 HD/PS4 remake comparison for SotC. 🙂
No PS2 unfortunately. I joined Sony well into the PS3s lifespan after the Wii had severely let me down, which also meant I wasn’t one of the lucky few to get a backwards compatible PS3.
I was tempted by the PS3 HD version, but I still had such a backlog of other titles to play (and still do) I put it far down the list. Now with a full remaster with visuals that seem to match how stunning TLG was, it’s jumped to basically the top of my interest.
It’s one of only a very few PS2 games I’ve hung on to.
If the remake is light touch (leave the game mostly alone, just fix a couple of the weird clunkiness and maybe add a couple of the extra collossi that were dropped in PS2 developpment and an easter egg or two) then it’ll be great.
Same here. My PS2 copies of Ico and SotC – in those lovely cardboard sleeve cases with the art cards – are some of my most treasured gaming possessions.
Yep. Oh, Ico. So atmospheric.
it’s probably cheaper to go out and buy a PS3 and the ico/shadow of the colossus disk at the moment than get a PS2 and an original copy.
The SotC remake irks me greatly.
We rarely cheer to-the-letter remakes within cinema or music; these kinds of reproductions would be shot down within the visual arts. Yet within video games we roar with approval when a game that has been available to play since 2005 is due to be remade without the input of the original developers and creators; finally, finally we can play and experience SotC in all it’s approximated glory… except it’s been there the whole damn time.
Not if you don’t have the platform it was released on.
You wouldn’t cheer a surround remaster of your favourite 60s album, or restoration and digitisation of classic films? To me this is the same thing. Revisiting great games that not enough people played, and making them run on current hardware with some of the features of that new hardware, is a good thing. Games have a much shorter shelf-life than music or film, even on Windows.
The PS3 HD remaster is more akin to what you’re describing. And I also disagree with that. Get the game up and running on new hardware, sure, that’s great, but when you start playing with lighting, colouring, textures, and sound, it becomes an issue.
I wouldn’t cheer a new group of musicians using the original instruments to record a version of my favourite album.
No, he’s pretty correct there. While the idea of a new engine may sound irritating, they’re still using the same graphics, same design etc. It’s a higher framerate though and clearer visuals that count. This is akin to going from 24fps VHS to 48fps digital download.
If however, they had redesigned the game, put a brand new figure in the role not representing the original in any manner, recasting it completely, changing up how everything looked etc, then you’d have a strong point regarding the differentiation. In regards to new musicians, no you wouldn’t, but say you got the chance to get, let’s take one of my favorite bands, the Beatles, and you were offered Abbey Road at the highest possible levels of clarity currently available, never heard before, when you could hear them hear the plucking of the strings like never before, where it brought a new audio experience never had prior, hear Ringo as he belted away on the drums etc. Then you’d have more akin, again, to what he’s mentioning, a true remaster. The weird part, is with games, they can be one, they can be the other or in this case, they can be *both*.
New engine, all of the assets are being remade, controls are being updated for modern players. It’s a remake, not a remaster, and not analogous to anything either of you have put down. That the narrative and gameplay content will remain the same doesn’t detract from the problems that arise with remakes.
This isn’t the same as format shifting, restoration of damaged stock, or mixing a master for greater clarity; the master has been dumped and a different set of musicians are laying down new tracks based off the original composition. For many games this isn’t going to be a massive issue. However, SotC is renowned for the consideration Ueda and Team ICO put towards art direction, tone, and mise en scene. These visual qualities were integral to the experience. Bluepoint will have to interpret and approximate the original textures when they’re remade at a higher resolution. Every minor alteration to character meshes, environment geometry, lighting , and colouration will contribute to a deviation in the visual composition from the original. However accomplished they are, they do not have that insight necessary replicate or further the original design – they could be a fantastic cover band but they’re introducing embellishments that did not previously exist and are neither the original composers nor the original performers.
I see two sides to this: it should be nice that players will get to experience such a brilliant game, but it’s terribly lamentable that the experience they have will be different to the original vision. It’s a remake that, as with many others, doesn’t need to happen.
Tubular Bells For Two. Every new recording of every symphony ever (“Conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and performed by the London Philharmonic….”)
I understand your discomfort with this kind of remake, and they do need to be handled carefully, but I don’t agree that they’re a bad idea in principle.
Yeah, obviously there are exceptions and formats where this is the norm, and that’s usually due to restrictions e.g. we can’t go back and watch Chopin, the best we can do is appreciate performers’ interpretations of his compositions.
I wouldn’t argue that remakes are a bad idea in principle. I am, however, arguing that this particular remake is.
Cheers for the tubular bells, hadn’t heard of it and it sounds exciting.
There’s some truth in this, but I believe that there’s something about game development that changes a bit the circumstances compared to other art forms. SotC in particular had a bit of troubled development and in the end, they had to rush what they could polish to completion for a scheduled release. LOTS of material had to be cut from it. A remake may open the chance to bring the final product closer to the initial artistic vision!
Fumito Ueda and Team ICO are not involved in this remake. If they were I’d have less of an issue.
Ah. Fai enough, then. :/
I never got around to playing Beyond Good and Evil on PS2. Sounds like I should dust it off, plug it in and give it a go.
It’s a wonderful, wonderful game. Which is where much of the disappointment with the new trailer comes from.
Also the main character Jade is awesome and the previous trailer shown for BG&E2 had her in it. So much of the love for BG&E is Jade so dropping her breaks a lot of the franchise connection.