Guys and gals, welcome back to the UESP blog!
It’s Damon again, and before I get into the meat of the post, I want to say that ESO is finally installed, it runs smoothly, but I can’t play it, because I don’t have a mouse and my touchpad on my laptop doesn’t like attempting to simultaneously left and right click to get me out of the frozen “disrupt attack” tutorial. I’ll have to find a mouse.
It’s June and once again E3 is underway, and Bethesda Softworks has once again held an E3 conference to bring us up to date on their projects for 2016. Just like I did last year, I sat through the conference and watched the livestream of it, and after the break is a list of what’s been announced, as well as my initial impressions of each particular item on the list.
I want to say ahead of time that this is all written as the conference goes on, so it may lack the polish of pre-written posts, but who gives a toss? As I said in the last BE3 post, meticulous notes aren’t my thing, and I’m writing this stuff in sequence as the stuff is announced. 🙂
Well, let me just say quickly, although I don’t plan to cover the preshow in detail, that it ran late, the conference as a whole ran late, there were some boring montages, some interesting Bethesda Trivia questions, and Morgan Webb and Adam Sessler were hosting it.
Excellent nostalgia from the G4TV days, and two people I missed seeing, although Sessler looks balder than usual, Webb seems marginally less attractive these days, and I swear I am aggravated that she said “Skyrim’s Shivering Isles”. I always had a sneaking suspicion she was there to be a gamer girl for diversity, and that’s a blatant mistake from someone who claims to love Bethesda games!
Once the conference itself started, the first thing we saw was a cool HD Quake trailer. Quake is a classic and fun multiplayer game, and I’ve got numerous good moments with friends on it, so seeing that a Quake release was coming from Id made me quite happy!
Quake Champions is a competitive area-based PVP FPS, just like its predecessors, and it looks like it will be beautiful. However, there’s not much to share at present, and more information will be revealed at QuakeCon.
After that quick introduction, Pete Hines took the stage to announce the next item on the conference, following a recap of their big releases of the previous year.
First on the list is a recap of The Elder Scrolls: Legends, that free-to-play spin-off card game. Hines showed the introduction cinematic, which is told from the perspective of a moth priest. Then the stream lagged and I missed a good chunk of it, so I won’t recap the cinematic itself.
To celebrate the successes of the recent beta, a new beta will bring in more test players, and the game will be brought to Android, iOS, and Mac.
I won’t go on about the meticulous details of the game, Alarra blogs about it enough that you should know.
There’s some new workshops for Fallout 4, which I haven’t played, although building your own vault seems to be a thing and looks cool. Fallout Shelter has some new features coming that I heard in my headphones, but missed the video for and can’t describe.
And, to confirm the rumors, a remastered Skyrim has come to current generation consoles. I personally think remastering everything is pointless, but I’ll get to that in some other post… maybe. It’s something that would be long and detract from this.
After the teasers for these previous items, the next actual presenter came up, and a presenter for Arkane came up to announce their new project: A psychological first-person shooter that the teaser made look a lot like Doom.
In Prey, you’re on a spacestation, and an alien swarm was awoken, and you have to fight it off. They didn’t go into detail on it. Like with Quake, more will be revealed at QuakeCon. I guess they are just putting out tastes so far.
Doom will get Snapmap updates, multiplayer gets some new gamemodes, and next month Unto the Evil, Doom’s first DLC map will come out with new DLC maps, a new playable Demon, a new gun, new items, armors, and more.
I said last year I was interested, but not in a rush to get Doom, but it’s looking more and more interesting as stuff is announced and comes out.
A demo for Doom is being released for the next week where you can play the first level of the game. It will not be there in a week, but I may have to give it a try and see what’s up.
Next on the list was ESO news. On June 23, Japan is going to receive ESO, and new content is coming soon, and on Tuesday, the Dark Brotherhood DLC comes out for console, and a release trailer was shown.
The trailer opened with a senior Assassin in the Brotherhood reciting the Black Sacrament to an initiate, along with a montage of badass. Kinda makes me want to hurry up and find that mouse to get to try it out on PC! Damn it, I’m going to eventually, because I don’t wanna let so much money go to waste.
ESO is announcing One Tamriel, which means quests and everything scale according to level, and level requirements basically become meaningless. Sounds like an excellent idea, because I hate level restrictions and stuff and grinding up to quest levels. More information in fall.
BethesdaVR is a thing, and you can use this VR on Doom and Fallout 4. Apparently, Fallout 4 will also be released in 2017 on an HTC VR platform. Looks like that would be fun as hell, and I hope that a new TES has that!
After Hines left again following the Bethesda VR announcement, a proper presentation of Dishonored 2 came along with some more footage!
Without my own playing of the first, with no history with the game, I can’t speak much on it, but it looks beautiful, and is released on the new Void Engine, bringing beautiful graphics, lighting, and audio to the table.
And, I found out for myself that Emily, the second protagonist of the game, is ruler of the land, Corvo’s daughter, and still the complete badass I thought she seemed in the first game. The game is set 15 years after the first game, and someone is assassinating people and framing it like Corvo, from what I can gather, and you’re playing as both Emily and Corvo trying to unravel the conspiracy that lead to the usurpation of the throne of Dunwall.
The gameplay looks fast, fluid, and as beautiful as the world, if combat can carry a beauty, and we see Emily in this trailer using her abilities to drop on and kill enemies, use her powers to throw explosives found on the environment and destroy a few things and kill, and she’s got some fascinating abilities and skills, all customisable via skill trees.
One that I found of note were Domino, which links enemies together and make them share the same fate, as it was used when enemies were linked together and a stun mine was used on one, stunning all.
From the detail I’ve shared here, compared to others, you can probably tell this one is interesting to me, huh?
Dishonored 2 comes out on November 11, 2016 on XB1, PS4, and PC and the Dishonored 2 presentation game to an end with the first look at the new gameplay trailer for the game.
Dishonored 2’s lengthy presentation wrapped up the conference.
All-in-all, I was for the most part indifferent to the items shown on the conference. The tease for building vaults in F4 looked like a novel idea, and I’m interested in that when I eventually get Fallout 4, which I still haven’t gotten, despite the hype for it.
Legends hasn’t looked fun to me from the get-go, and ultimately, I am not in a rush to try the game on release, despite being a free game. ESO’s news, aside from levelling things and not being level locked like other MMOs, was for the consoles, for the most part. ESO’s Dark Brotherhood, which while cool looking, was for PC already for a while, so if I actually get around to playing ESO and like it, I can play it already. Although by the time I get to playing it consoles will have it already.
After Dishonored, I think Quake is the next interesting thing for me, although it’s a weak second. I liked the first quake, but multiplayer FPS’s have never been my forte. And none of my Quake friends have been playing recently, so nobody to play with me.
Prey? Horror games never work with me. I’m too much of a baby to get far into Doom 3, so while DOOM has cool features, I won’t be fast to get it or similar games, like Prey. Although it has an intriguing premise.
I don’t know. I knew from the beginning that this was a transitional year, and that we were between the big “flagship” games, so it wasnt’ as grand of an affair as last year’s, but it was still a fun one.
Also, Blink-182 is at BE3. I didn’t know they were still a thing, and they must be struggling for publicity if they have to crash a gaming industry conference. Sorry, guys, but your music sucks!
So, as I forewarned, these were unpolished thoughts on everything that I’m too lazy to polish. I quite like this BE3 impressions thing. Since I am watching the conferences anyway, I might have to make BE3 posts a tradition of mine each time BE3 happens.
Anyway, I’ll take off now. This is probably up there alongside the Roleplaying Guide/Opinions as my second-longest blog post.
