I don’t know about you, but something I didn’t expect was Ubisoft and Nintendo to look at XCOM and go, “Yeah, let’s put Rabbids in that.”
There’s always something that pops out and surprises from E3, but the general take I’ve seen from comments here, social media and elsewhere is that this year’s E3 was a fraction flat. There wasn’t a huge amount in the way of new IP, although you did have the Mario + Rabbids cross-over. Ubisoft getting into the multiplayer pirate genre was interesting, but probably not as important as their attempt to muscle into Skylanders territory.
Microsoft not saying a peep about VR or even HoloLens, especially after that incredible Minecraft demo last year, was a surprise but not a particularly massive one. The future of VR for the next few years is really more in how other industries can use VR, and Microsoft’s own creations obviously aren’t quite there yet.
But as for surprises, we probably have to acknowledge the elephant in the room: Metroid. Not one, but two games.
That’s pretty huge.
What was the biggest surprise of E3 2017, whether it was a game, something that happened during a conference, or something else?
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20 responses to “What Was The Biggest Surprise From E3?”
You’ve already hit the nail on the head for me; Mario + Rabbids.
Cared less than 1% before the show, now I will almost certainly be picking it up.
Skull & Bones would have been another nice surprise but it seems too MP focused for me.
Given the history of the franchise over the last decade, MH on non-Nintendo hardware. Doubly so that it’s coming to PC as well.
There’s a heap of negativity around this release – even rumours of QTE’s.
Additionally, it seems that MH on Switch is not getting a localized release:
http://nintendoeverything.com/capcom-says-it-has-no-plans-to-localize-monster-hunter-xx/
Persistent rumours of money changing hands between Sony and Capcom.
For context, what they actually said is that they “have no announcement at this time.” They said the same thing about MHX, and 6 months later they announced it in the west as Generations.
No amount of money between Sony and Capcom will prevent Capcom from releasing a future mainline MH game on Switch. None. Not unless Sony wants to pay Capcom future earnings from such a title. In successfully porting XX to the Switch in Japan (and having cross platform save and play), Nintendo have basically guaranteed the future of the series on the console. The installation base is there for Capcom to basically cash in on MH5.
It’s only a matter of time XX gets localised. If there was one strategic business decision I will praise Nintendo for in the last couple of years, it would laying the foundation of MH on the Wii U and 3DS with Capcom.
This was the first year in like a decade where i wasn’t expecting a metroid announcement. The “prime, sometime” was a nice show of intent, but the return of samus coming out in september won me over.
Something now, something later.
Mario t-rex is just… i can’t even. The moustache!
Oh, and that rabbids game is really out there. The movement and cover options are pretty nuts for an xcom game. I also actually like the rabbids characters and always have. I like their very french, animated, Ancel humour.
They’re several orders of magnitude better than the minions.
Fight me.
I agree. Rabbids > minions
Probably Wolf2 for me, espeically coming so soon. I was expecting (hoping) for something Metroid related, so certainly nice to be getting double the love there.
Monster Hunter World, on PS4. That is all I really care about from E3.
Anthem, Fortnite and Shadow of the Colossus.
Anthem has this Ironman feeling that I instantly fell in love with. The coop feature is also quite nice.
Fortnite has come pretty far from the relatively boring looking start, even if it still just looks like Dungeon Defenders.
A remake of Shadow will either be amazing or completely balls; here is to hoping it is the former.
I also look forward to State of Decay 2, but that wasn’t a surprise at all.
Not trying to dampen any enthusiasm/start a war, but did you not think that Monster Hunters combat looked dated and – dare I say it – a little dull given that we had Horizon earlier in the year which brought the fighting of big massive creatures bang up to date?
Was just something that struck me whilst watching…
Horizon certainly did ranged combat really well thanks to the skills and the variety of arrows, tripmines and grenades (and the line-launcher), but the general melee combat was very simplistic, imo. Once you get the ability to slow time when you jump, there’s not much reason to ever go back to melee, since you can do way more damage at range.
MH’s combat does look a little dated, but I don’t think Horizon is the right game to use as the benchmark given its focus is more on ranged combat than melee.
I haven’t play Horizon so I can’t comment on that combat system. I think it’s still a little early to tell regarding MH World’s combat mechanics. MH X/Generations introduced some really awesome stuff into the series so it’ll be interesting if they incorporate any of that. That said, I’m not overly excited for World myself, something about the graphic style they’ve gone with is putting me off.
Assassin’s Creed actually looking like an evolution was pretty surprising to me. Looks like it’ll be a good game.
Spiderman might be really fun, too. I assumed it’d just be linear and safe, but Insomniac seem to want to compete with Rocksteady already.
I’m still super cynical in relation to Origins.
I think they needed to take more time off and change things up a bit more.
Still seems pretty jank-y, too. At least they’ve still got time polish. They better roll their sleeves up.
I have never looked forward to a Spiderman game until now
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was my biggest surprise.
It should not look as good as it does.
Monster Hunter for sure,
Came into E3 expecting a MHXX localisation announcement.
Got an entire new Monster Hunter game that is looking fantastic from what i’ve been reading about it.
Would have loved both to be announced but i’ll take what i’ve gotten.
Mario Rabbids, for sure.
But also having a Mario song with lyrics. Snappy.
Probably the announcement of a mainline Pokemon game coming to Switch. We’d just had the Pokemon Direct and there was nothing about it in there so I was not expecting ANY news at all.