This week, the Electronic Wireless Show podcast remembers the recently deceased E3 games show. Unfortunately, all that we can really recall is the occasional watch party, and maybe Keanu Reeves was there at one point? Was mostly just trailers, let’s be honest. Thus we also consider the events that replace it (with a side-chat on this year’s Game Awards), and how we’d design our own glittering showcase o' games.
]]>It's no surprise to hear that E3 is officially dead. The games industry's annual mega-marketing event had been suffering for years, then skipping 2020 due to covid without an online alternative left space for its killers to aggressively expand and make clear quite how redundant E3 had become. On one hand, E3 was a week of misleading marketing, dubious claims, expensive stunts, and empty hype. On the other, the 317 assorted online events replacing E3 are just as bad, and now they sprawl across months. I miss E3. Bring back E3. I'm sorry, E3. I didn't know how good we had it. Please, bring back E3.
]]>"After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye. Thanks for the memories." So says the official E3 website this afternoon, as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) confirm that E3 is officially dead.
]]>Bad news for fans of trade events with an identity crisis: it looks increasingly like E3 will not happen in 2024 either. The ESA have informed the Los Angeles Convention Center, the event's traditional home, that it will not be hosting a show there next year, and events company ReedPop are no longer working with the ESA on future E3 events.
]]>E3 2023 has been cancelled. The Entertainment Software Association announced the news to its members earlier today and confirmed it publicly shortly thereafter. The ESA's email said that the event "simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry."
]]>E3 is back as an in-person event in 2023 and will run from June 13th to 16th, the Entertainment Software Association and ReedPop have announced. There hasn’t been an in-person E3 since 2019, and just one digital event bearing the E3 name has taken place since then. That’s a pretty big deal for a show that ran relatively unhindered for almost a quarter of a century. New organisers ReedPop are the people behind PAX, EGX, New York Comic-Con, and Star Wars Celebration, to name a few. I should mention too, of course, that they're this site’s parent organisation.
]]>As we reported last month, E3 will be back as a digital and in-person event for 2023 - and today we can announce that it will be produced by our corporate dad ReedPop, in partnership with the Entertainment Software Association. Let the tidal wave of disclosures commence.
]]>What better way to spend a Sunday evening than by settling down to watch this year's PC Gaming Show, brought to you courtesy of cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer as part of this year's Not-E3 festivities? It's a guides team takeover tonight as Hayden and Rebecca, RPS's duo of in-house Guides Writers, wrestle control of the liveblog away from our more chat-fatigued colleagues to bring you our highly unique blend of weird perspectives and in-jokes once it all kicks off at 8:30pm BST / 3:30pm EDT / 12:30pm PDT.
]]>Geoff-Fest, Keigh3, or just regular old E3 week (but not really) - whatever you want to call it, announcement season is here. Summer Game Fest 2022 has now wrapped up and there were plenty of trailers and world premieres to gawk at. If you couldn’t keep up with Keighley’s Summer Game Fest onslaught, or just need a reminder of what happened, we’ve got every new trailer from Summer Games Fest 2022 right here.
]]>It might have been cancelled entirely this year, but E3 will be back as an in-person and digital event in 2023. The commitment came from Entertainment Software Association president Stan Pierre-Louis during an interview with The Washington Post.
]]>Summer Game Fest organiser Geoff Keighley has advised people tuning in to this Thursday’s showcase not to expect any “megaton shock” game announcements. The stunning revelation that maybe you shouldn’t expect too many brand-new AAA game reveals following a global pandemic came through an audio broadcast on Twitter Spaces over the weekend, transcribed by VGC. “We’ve got lots of good stuff to show you,” Keighley said, “but buyer beware of some of the crazy rumours I’m seeing out there in terms of things people expect to get announced.”
]]>One-man games industry Geoff Keighley has revealed that third-party publishers won’t be staging as many showcases of their own this summer. Keighley made the comments in a Twitter Spaces cast over the weekend, probably to everyone's great relief. Of course, he immediately followed up by explaining that the publishers with fewer games to show will be rolling their presentations into Keighley’s own Summer Game Fest, as well as first-party shows such as the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase.
]]>Looking for a comprehensive schedule of the summer's big gaming events and showcases? After a muted return from pandemic oblivion as a digital event in 2021, plans for E3 2022 in any form were scrapped way back in March. But those who can't picture the start of summer without a festival of gaming trailers and announcements needn't fret, because a number of other, similar events will be going ahead in E3's usual place. Collectively (and highly unofficially) referred to as Not-E3, these various events are expected to run for around two-and-a-half months between June and August, and look to cover everything from triple-A titles to the hottest indies on the radar right now.
Read on for the scheduled line-up of everything we know so far. We'll keep this page updated with more information as we get it, including links to livestreams once they're available!
]]>Good news! Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest megamix is going to be a much more condensed affair than last year's months-long relay of game announcements, clocking in at just four days for the core event. Phew. We already knew the event was going to kick off on June 9th, but Keighley has now revealed that the bulk of the announcements will be done and dusted by Sunday June 12th. And breathe...
]]>Summer Game Fest have announced the show will be back for the third time on June 9th to beam Geoff Keighley straight into your peepholes. Proceedings kick off at 11am PST/2pm EST/7pm BST/8pm CEST and are streamed live from Los Angeles across YouTube, Twitch and other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
]]>E3 2022's physical event was cancelled back in January, but at the time organisers said they were "excited about the possibilities of an online event". Now that digital event has been cancelled as well, meaning there will be no E3 at all in 2022.
]]>Unsurprisingly, E3 will once again not happen as an in-person event this year, what with the whole global pandemic and all. The Entertainment Software Association, who organise E3, had hoped that the main event on the video games industry's marketing calendar would return properly this year, after skipping 2019 and going online in 2020, but nope. While they haven't yet confirmed whether or not they'll arrange an online E3 in its stead, they seem to be considering it. But even if not, the industry will doubltess manage to host its own advert-o-ramas without the E3 banner.
]]>It was a weird E3. A lot of video games we already knew about, and more CG trailers than we might like, but there were still some notable announcements and gameplay reveals. While Kevin Hart didn't seem too pleased with his involvement in the festivities, those watching at home had an alright time.
]]>E3 is a time for marketing, and this year even E3 has an E3 trailer to remind you that E3 will be at E3 when E3 starts Saturday during E3. Perhaps the ESA are worried about their diminishing profile and relevancy, given that a raft of other events sprung up to replace the show after they skipped 2020. So, uh, this is E3's E3 trailer? Look, just see our E3 schedule, which includes events they won't tell you about because they're not officially part of E3.
]]>Yes, it’s that time of the year when everyone speculates wildly about what kind of products companies will peddle to potential customers during livestreams rife with forced banter and lols. E3 is exciting, isn’t it?
]]>Hello and welcome to another PrE3 post where I get to tell you the name of something that will be shown off during this next week of trailers and announcements and all. We were already planning to hear about about the next Clancy 'em up during the Ubisoft Forward event, and now we've been given its title. Mr. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction is the new name for the game formerly known as R6 Quarantine. Ubi say that they'll be doing a big full reveal for the next R6 game this weekend.
]]>The digital clouds have darkened and E3 looms, promising an absolute downpour of trailers starting this weekend. In among all the other announcement blasts kicking off in short order is one from Warner Bros., who are having the first E3 presser of their own on Sunday. The Bros. forecast promised 100% chance of zombie slaying Back 4 Blood. We'd also anticipated that perhaps we might hear about some other upcoming WB joints. Not so, it turns out. If you were hoping for some DC news, I'm sorry to tell you that Batman's been left for dead. At least as far as WB's own showcase this Sunday is concerned.
]]>After skipping 2020 due to the pandemic, E3 returns this year as a virtual event. E3 tends to be the anchor for a summer of marketing events blasting announcements and trailers, with loads of publishers and websites and such holding their own showcases around then too. So here's our handy schedule of what's on when this summer, from E3 through to Gamescom. We'll keep updating as more events are announced and detailed.
]]>E3 is coming back. It skipped 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and will grace our screens in 2021 as an all-digital event. Last year was the first time since 1995 that an E3 didn't take place, so we saw what would happen if the event no longer existed… and life went on. Game companies and media outlets took their plans for the big conference and made them their own, hosting live streams and releasing demos digitally all throughout the summer. While a lot of it was a summer mish-mash of shows, we still got all the announcements that would've been at E3, so I ask you: do we still need E3?
]]>After skipping last year due to the pandemic, E3 will officially return in 2021 with a free online show running June 12-15th. The organisers say to expect participants including Microsoft, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and Nintendo. E3 is the biggest marketing event on the games industry's calendar but last year its organisers didn't arrange an online replacement after the pandemic ruled out an in-person show, leading to a weeks-long sprawl of unaffiliated alternatives from publishers and the media. I never thought I'd say it but: I missed E3. Please save us from the endless NotE3.
]]>Lots of gaming conventions and events were cancelled last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, including E3. Unlike other events that ended up going online, the Entertainment Software Association announced the event was fully cancelled in 2020 and would return in 2021. E3's organisers have confirmed that they will be putting together an online E3 this year.
]]>Bloody hell, I'm starting to lose track of all these World Of Darkness gigs. Taking the spotlight with a new trailer during tonight's Nacon Connect showcase, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is a blood-sucking RPG from Big Bad Wolf that follows three unlikely (and undead) friends teaming up to investigate blood-curdling conspiracies in the heart of Boston. While it's still early days, Swansong will arrive on the Epic Games Store sometime next year.
]]>The first episode of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City Wire just wrapped, broadcasting more deets from CD Projekt's long-awaited open-world hackathon. Almost a year since we last hit the streets of Night City, we've hacked into the 25-minute livestream to dig up some of Cyberpunk's mind-invading "braindance" investigations, hands-on gameplay, and an explosive new trailer pieced together from the game's brutal opening hours.
]]>Things might have quietened down after last week's not-E3 barrage of streams, but that doesn't mean we're quite out of videogame hell. Tonight, the folks at retro horror community Haunted PS1 are delivering their own "EEK3" showcase - lining up trailers for over 40 low-fidelity indie spook 'em ups, along with a dimly-lit digital convention centre to get lost in.
]]>It is time, once again, to scream about Skate Story. Sam Eng's crystalline kickflipper made a fleeting appearance during this weekend's second Guerrilla Collective stream-a-thon. The new trailer flaunted more of the game's stunning concrete underworlds while laying out the technical footwork that'll get you there. To paraphrase a truly well-worn phrase, one doesn't simply ollie their way into hell - and lord, do I long for the day when I can carve my way into Skate Story's abyss.
]]>Admittedly, I wouldn't mind getting lost in Röki's mysterious forests. Making an appearance during today's Guerrilla Collective steam, Polygon Treehouse's chilled fantasy has found its way out of the gamedev forest, emerging from the treeling with a new trailer and a release date that'll bring the folklore adventure to Steam and GOG in a little over a month.
]]>Polish that chrome-dome, 47. It's time for your final mission. Announced during Sony's big ol' PlayStation 5 reveal stream, Hitman 3 is gearing up for one last trilogy-ending job next January on Sony's next-gen tellybox as well as PC and Xbox. True to form, our first look at Hitman 3 was an elusive one. A dark forest, sharp suits, high-society, and portrait of the high-collared hairless killer himself.
]]>We're in the swing of it now, eh readers? Today's kinda-sorta-E3 2020 streams are well underway, starting with The Escapist's Indie Showcase earlier this afternoon. Fronted by that fast-talking internet lad from Zero Punctuation, the showcase kicked off today's festivities with a flood of 80 game trailers over a 2-hour run-time. Frankly, that's a lotta games, so here's our rundown of what you may have missed.
]]>June is here but E3 is not, with the games expo's cancellation leaving the the industry without an anchor for the year's big announcements and marketing blasts. E3's organisers are not planning an online replacement of their own, so instead a load of different small expos, festivals, and marketing blasts will be filling in this year. While E3 and the surrounding blast are done inside two weeks, this all will go across two months. It can be a bit confusing so here's the schedule of events and streams coming in E3's stead, now updated for all the postponements.
]]>As rumours predicted, E3 has officially been cancelled. Like all the other events cancelled recently, it's down to health concerns over the Covid-19 coronavirus. The highest-profile marketing event of the games industry calendar is binned.
"After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry – our fans, our employees, our exhibitors, and our longtime E3 partners – we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020," the Entertainment Software Association said today. They do say they're considering an online show for all the big announcements, though I'm sure we'd still hear them all if not.
]]>Update: Annnd it's official: E3 is cancelled.
With more and more events being cancelled over recent weeks due to concerns about the Covid-19 coronavirus, it's seemed nigh inevitable that June's E3 would be binned. The organisers have so far said they were keeping an eye on the situation while moving ahead buuut now several outlets are reporting they've heard that E3 is scrapped. Rumour says this will be announced at 9:30am Pacific (4:30 UK time) today. Should the rumours be wrong and this not happen today, ah c'mon the ESA are just kicking the can down the road.
]]>Following the postponement of this year's Game Developers Conference due to concerns about the Covid-19 virus, the organisers of other upcoming games events must surely be asking themselves that same difficult question. For E3 2020, at least, the Entertainment Software Association say they're keeping an eye on things but "moving ahead full speed" with planning. Which I guess means they're are hoping this will have blown over by June?
]]>Last summer, it came to light that the organisers of E3 had left personal details of thousands of media people (including some of our own) in a file anyone online could access. Welp. It didn't exactly make anyone keen to return to that cacophonous hellhall. But this year they're really trying not to leak addresses, phone numbers, or anything, for real. In an update about plans for this year's show, the ESA say "You should also know that we've upgraded our media registration process, which received a lot of attention this past summer." Yeah, some.
]]>The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have leaked over six thousand more names and personal details from members of the games media than was previously thought, the company confirmed to Rock Paper Shotgun. In addition to the 2025 journalists, bloggers, analysts, and streamers whose physical addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail handles were made public in last week's leak of E3 2019 info, information for media attending two earlier years of E3 conferences was also made available through public spreadsheets.
]]>The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the North American games industry body whose responsibilities include organising E3, have quasi-accidentally leaked personal details of over two thousand people. The names, addresses, phone numbers, and more of folks who registered for E3 2019 media badges [disclosure: including some of our own] were posted online in a spreadsheet that apparently anyone could download. The ESA, who also lobby governments on behalf of big publishers and founded the ESRB ratings board, have not apologised but do say they "regret this occurrence." Oh that's fine, then.
]]>Well the season of conferences for E3 2019 is finally over, but the show itself has only just begun. Lots of games were announced, some surprises were had, and there have been moments of crippling disappointment. In case you have missed the conferences and want the full experience for each of them, I've compiled a list of links to the conferences so you can watch them at your own leisure.
]]>My friend Josh loves Halo. For nineteen years now, whenever a new Halo has come out, I’ve gone round to his place, and we’ve spent a night playing through its campaign as a sort of ritual. I’m garbage at shooters, mind, and Josh insists on playing on Heroic mode, so the whole experience boils down to him protecting me from aliens while we chat about our lives. There are few occasions I look forward to more.
But the actual game is virtually background noise: it’s a way for us to grab a few hours together and really catch up, in the same way that golf provides many grim men with a place to talk about deals. But still, I can’t help it - so many years of memories have given me a sort of emotional screenburn; an immense, vague fondness for Halo that has barely anything to do with what happens in-game.
]]>Mummies! They're like zombies, but easier to clean up once you're finished with them, at least according to Strange Brigade's new gameplay trailer. The cooperative 1930s-set shooter isn't far off now - due out at the end of August - but Rebellion have apparently got one last PR blitz in them before E3 swallows all and everything blurs into one nightmare gaming haze. Within, a very pulp serial trailer, featuring one of the most cheerfully bombastic narrators around.
]]>Much like Agent 47, Hitman 2's approach wasn't nearly as stealthy as it hoped to be, but the end results aren't to be sniffed at. Eagle-eyed internet people spotted its logo a few days back, but today Io Interactive officially announced the sequel to 2016's episodic murder-sandbox. Unlike the previous game, this one will be released all in one go (with plans for later expansions) and is available for pre-order, with the deal sweetened by immediate access to the Sniper Assassin co-op mode.
]]>It’s E3 and we are now building our annual cocoon, woven together by a single thread of strong, silky videogame news. But this festival of buzzwords and bright lights isn’t for everyone. So (just like last year) we’re doing alternative coverage to calm everyone’s nerves, starting with FREE 3 – three days of three games, all of them free, which you can play instead of waiting for all the upcoming hits. Come in, come in.
]]>E3, the event "as close as this industry gets to Eurovision", officially begins on Tuesday. Thousands of developers, members of the press, and gawkers will descend upon Los Angeles for the four-day trade show, full of demos, presentations, and questions like "How many guns does this have?" E3 unofficially begins before then, mind, with publishers and platform holders livestreaming presentations from Saturday. Most of the announcements come from these and, as Graham said, they are pretty Eurovision. What to watch and when? Here's our roundup of E3 livestreams.
]]>I'm really looking forward to E3 next week.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo takes place in Los Angeles each year, but it sprays press releases, trailers and livestreamed stage presentations worldwide. It is loud, it is marketing and it is often ridiculous, but it's also a way to take the temperature of the industry. Over the course of a week of 'live' multiplayer demos and highlight reels which overuse slow motion, we're going to find out what EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony and everyone else thinks is important right now. Better yet, we're going to find out all the daft ways they thought it was appropriate to express what they think is important right now.
]]>Obviously we at RPS must have made E3 look so glamorous that everyone wants a look-in. I mean, I assume that that's the reason the Electronic Entertainment Expo [official site] is offering tickets to the general public for this year's show - all of our tweeting from press conferences and the mention of pancakes the size of pillows at local diners and that story about how I brought a stick coated in tar back as a present for Alice... It's E3 gold, innit.
]]>Can a free-to-play standalone version of a card game within an RPG really be one of the best games at E3? I played Gwent [official site] yesterday and I've been thinking about it ever since.
]]>One of the most exciting games in Los Angeles this week won’t be featured at press conferences or on the showfloor. Phoenix Point [official site] is the new tactical-strategy hybrid from Julian Gollop, the creator of the original X-COM, and we met yesterday to discuss its procedurally generated alien threats, simulated human factions and much more. Here’s the world’s first in-depth look at the game.
]]>"Capcom has heard fans’ masochistic cries for a Resident Evil game far more terrifying than anything that has come before it," said the publisher shortly after revealing Resident Evil 7 Biohazard [official site] during Sony's E3 press conference yesterday. In what is a pretty radical step for the series, it seems this one's fully first-person and "draws from the series’ roots of atmospheric survival horror," so say its creators. Having watched the first 20 minutes of the 'Beginning Hour' demo, courtesy of the folks over at GameSpot, I'm not entirely convinced by that last part. Have a look for yourself and I'll explain.
]]>A couple of weeks back, we learned that time-manipulating FPS SUPERHOT [official site] was in-line for an Oculus Rift-powered virtual reality edition. Speaking on Reddit, SUPERHOT Team's PR person Szymon Krukowski explained that the hardware's as yet unreleased motion controllers are tied to the game's start-stop mechanics and it all sounded pretty wonderful. Now SUPERHOT VR has a trailer and, yes, it looks every bit as good as I imagined.
]]>As part of their recent promise to support Payday 2 [official site] for at least the next 18 months, Overkill Software have now revealed what its latest batch of DLC, due out on Thursday, is all about. It's two separate expansions - The Biker Heist and The Biker Character Pack - taking the total number of paid-for and free add-ons for the first-person robbery fest to an impressive 60. Between the two, expect new weapons, masks, a new character, and a new heist.
To mark the occasion, Overkill released a typically Payday live-action trailer alongside the reveal. It's got a shotgun-wielding Ron Perlman in it and it's all a bit Sons of Anarchy. See:
]]>Skyrim doesn't feel old enough to have a shiny new edition with enhanced bells and whistles, but that's exactly what's coming on October 28th. It'll be released on current-gen consoles as well as PC, and if you own either the Legendary Edition of the original, or the base game plus all DLC bought separately, you'll receive a free upgrade to the new hotness. You can see it below.
]]>When Raphaël Colantonio took to the stage at Bethesda's E3 showcase, I figured he'd be talking about Dishonored 2. He's one of the creative directors of the studio, alongside Harvey Smith, and we knew we were going to see more of their stealthy sequel.
Instead, Colantonio said he'd be working on something else, with a second team within the studio. A game in the same tradition as Dishonored - an immersive sim - but with an extra pinch of horror. It's Prey.
]]>Fallout Shelter is the post-apocalyptic management game that Bethesda slid onto tablets and cleverphones last year. I haven't played it myself but know people who spend commutes and late nights in front of the telly tapping and swiping as they help their survivors to thrive. Or exploit them for kicks. The game is coming to PC in July and DLC for big momma Fallout 4 is coming thick and fast as well. Most notably, Vault-Tec, a build your own vault expansion, in July.
]]>Bethesda's E3 showcase wrapped up this evening (LA time) and I was there, in an enormous hangar, as new things were announced (Prey! Quake!) and more details of the games we've already played or heard about were released. The pick of the crop was Dishonored 2 [official site], which had that rarest of things: an E3 showing that involved an actual dev walkthrough of a mission and the new character abilities. Beats even the shiniest of trailers. You can see a trailer below, captured in-game, along with thoughts on the wonderful time-twisting mechanic.
]]>"We are on a journey to regain the trust of the PC gamer," says Peter O’Reilly, senior marketing director for Origin. As reported by MCV, the publisher is attempting to correct their reputation after the wrongs of the recent past, by trying to make sure games have smooth launches and that Origin is useful to people. At the same time, the company say they won't have a presence on E3's showfloor this year, instead focusing on their own EA Play event across the street.
]]>Sword Coast Legends [official site] was one of my favourite experiences at E3. In a little booth off the main show floor, the developers are demo-ing their D&D game's dungeon master mode. I've only recently dipped a toe into D&D with a tabletop campaign but it's been excellent fun so far and I was curious as to how the mode would measure up.
]]>"Deus Ex meets District 9" is how the company described Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] during a demo I attended at E3. Set two years after Human Revolution, Mankind Divided showcases a society still deeply fearful after the Aug Incident where mechanically augmented people turned violent, stripped of self-control after a signal deliberately interfered with their in-built bio-chips. The scale of the incident means augmentations are now viewed with suspicion and augmented people treated as outcasts. Adam Jensen himself is working as a counter-terrorist agent fighting some of the resultant crime. Well. That's his day job. He secretly believes the task force was set up by the Illuminti for a different purpose and is working to take them down.
"He's a tool and a weapon," is executive game director Jean-François Dugas' analysis of this Adam Jensen.
]]>I arrived a few minutes early for a Banner Saga 2 [official site] interview with Stoic's artist Arnie Jorgensen and writer Drew McGee at E3 so I set my bags down and walked over to a vacant demo computer. The game is the second of Stoic's planned trilogy and I've only played half of the first Banner Saga so I was a little cautious – what if there were spoilers?
Curiosity won out and OH GOD THERE WERE SPOILERS!
With that in mind, if you've not played or finished the first game and wish to avoid spoilers just bookmark this for later:
]]>Whilst at E3 I spent an hour with Sean Murray, managing director over at Hello Games. We were talking about No Man's Sky [official site]. Well, we were mostly talking about No Man's Sky. I had to cut a surprisingly lengthy discussion of whether cake was better than pie (it isn't). The thing about No Man's Sky which is most interesting to me right now is how Hello Games – Murray in particular – are trying to deal with audience expectations, shifting them from hype and projected desire to excited realism.
]]>The Hitman [official site] trailer shown at E3 gave a promising tease for a game which is provoking anxiety as well as anticipation. The sentiment I've heard echoing through editorials and comment sections boils down to "more Blood Money, less Absolution, please" but IO Interactive's creative director, Christian Elverdam hopes to marry the best of both games, distilling them to find the essence of Hitman. Eau d'Assassin, perhaps?
"We're trying to distil the essence of [Hitman]," Elverdam tells me. "We've been doing Hitman for fifteen years and we felt we had a chance now to try to build... I wouldn't say the perfect hitman game, but the aspiration is to build the perfect Hitman game."
We're sitting in a little room at the back of the Square Enix booth a little removed from the scrum of the E3 show floor. Elverdam is about to take Agent 47 to a Parisian fashion show in an enormous mansion – possibly an art gallery. It's at this swanky gathering that you'll attempt to find a way to take out a gentleman by the name of Viktor Novikov.
]]>Remake or reboot? That's the question I asked Jacob Beucler, director of global operations at Wargaming during an E3 demonstration of Master of Orion [official site].
"Definitely a reboot," he says. "We're taking things very seriously in terms of what made this franchise great." By this he means Master of Orion and its first sequel, not the curious but problematic Master of Orion 3 (which our Adam likes to pretend never even happened).
]]>When I go to watch the Creative Assembly team show off units from their upcoming Total War: Warhammer [official site] game, what really sticks out to me is the sense of humour. I've been to Total War previews before and the emphasis is very definitely on serious historical epic battles. This time around I watch a goblin with scrappy-looking wooden wings clamber into a catapult, preparing to fling himself into the ranks of the opposition.
"That's called the Doomdiver catapult," grins battle designer Simon Mann. "Goblins volunteer – I don't know why you would – to have a pair of wooden wings strapped to their backs, get loaded into a catapult and then just get launched. In our game it is kind of silly, and there's a lot of humour in the Warhammer franchise."
The demo we've just seen didn't involve a hands-on but it did give a decent peek at a lot of the units from the Empire and Greenskins factions. (Dwarfs and Vampire Counts will come a bit later, with Chaos also very strongly implied in trailers.) The Greenbacks are all manner of weird and wonderful, while the Empire occupies relatively familiar Total War territory - give or take the odd demigryph.
]]>R2-D2 smells like yoghurt. In fact, the whole second part of the Star Wars Battlefront [official site] queue at E3 smells like yoghurt. I'm in a group of 40 attendees waiting for our turn to do battle on Hoth in the final play session of E3. I think the yoghurty smell is coming from the copious dry ice, which is swirling around R2's wheels as EA try to create a Hoth-like experience in a cavernous conference hall in downtown LA.
The Hoth of the game is not yoghurty, but it is gorgeous. An expansive snowy wilderness which we spawn into as Stormtroopers. Well, 20 of us do. The other 20 are rebel scum, ripe for the shooting.
]]>"Can I play as the dinosaur?" I ask a slightly jetlagged David Braben as we discuss the just-announced Planet Coaster [official site] after the PC Gaming Show at E3.
"Mmmm. Not at the moment but it's a nice idea."
He pauses then adds, "You do realise it's not actually a dinosaur? It's a bloke in a suit."
"We're done here."
]]>E3 is in full swing. The announcements and press conferences are done, and attendees are getting down to the business of playing games, chugging energy drinks and wondering when it will all be over (TODAY, IT WILL ALL BE OVER TODAY). Pip is on-site but the rest of RPS stayed home, watching from afar. We've covered the showcase events, gathered all of the news and shouted CUPHEAD until our lungs burn.
Below, you'll find details of every major PC game at the event, including those that were revealed for the first time. All of the trailers and videos are in one place, along with our thoughts about what we've seen.
]]>Just Cause 3 [official site] is a spectator's dream. I'd been playing for at least two and a half hours when I decided to take a walk around the room to see what all of the other journalists were up to. Some were testing the physics by attaching cars to boats, planes to people and spluttering scooters to everything. Some had learned to navigate the game's new yet familiar setting - the fictional Mediterranean island of Medici - like ground-skimming superheroes, swift creatures of the air who used a combination of grapple lines, wingsuit and parachute to stay airborne. Some were exploding everything.
On one screen the Looney Tunes violence elsewhere had been transformed into something grim.
]]>Doom [official site] came to the Dolby Theatre as E3 began. Bethesda's showcase event included an in-depth look at a game we already knew about, the announcement of a game that we already knew about and the blood-spattered reveal of a game we've been playing (in various forms) for most of our adult lives. Doom is back. Nathan Ditum was on-site for the live demonstration, and squinted through the gore and melee animations to find the rhythm of the past.
It’s a strange and difficult thing, to bring back a classic game. During the in-game demonstration of id’s new Doom at Bethesda’s E3 showcase, crowd reaction suggests that this particular reboot is on the right track. There are cheers when our hero punches a demon’s head clean off with an outrageous melee attack. There is a round of appreciative applause when an arm is wrenched off at the elbow and the palm used as a key (clever!). And there are delighted gasps as a demon is torn in the manner of a strongman phonebook trick, a wet fleshy tear from the jaw down.
]]>A viking, a samurai and a knight walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Is this some kind of videogame?" and the knight replies, "Yes. Yes it is."
For Honor was announced at the Ubisoft E3 event last night. Under development at Ubisoft Montreal, where 90% of the world's games will soon be created, it's a violent blend of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, War of the Vikings and daft-as-a-motorised-frog TV show Deadliest Warrior*. As a viking, samurai or knight, you'll run around battlefields attempting to gain control of key areas, fighting human opponents as well as hacking your way through AI warriors. Two videos await below - a glossy made-for-E3 trailer and some multiplayer footage with dev commentary.
]]>When Microsoft made the announcement that they'd be adopting some kind of Early Access process for the Xbone, I joked that one of the other major publishers would use their conference to announce a Kickstarter. And so..
Last night, while I was catching up on sleep after a frantic weekend, Sony invited Shenmue director Yu Suzuki onstage to announce that they would be funding and publishing Shenmue III on PS4 he would be Kickstarting the sequel and releasing it on PC and PS4. The campaign has already raised almost $1.8m of a $2m target.
If you'd have told me that E3 would play host to a more attractive video than the CUPHEAD trailer we covered less than an hour ago, I would have laughed you out of the building. Doesn't matter which building you were in - be it house, pub, shop or tower - I'd have shown up and chased you out of the backdoor, chortling like a ticklish hyena. If you happened to be outside at the time, I'd have laughed you off the planet.
That's all over now. SUPERHOT [official site], the exquisite first-person shooter in which time only moves when you move, looks astonishingly beautiful in a new video, which you can see below.
]]>Tacoma [official site] - AKA wot the Gone Home studio are doing right now - isn't necessarily channeling System Shock or 2001, but a short new trailer revealed during the Microsoft E3 conference suggests there's something a little bit off about the AI on board the titular station. Steve Gaynor presented live onstage at the conference and spoke about how Gone Home had explored the familiar and Fullbright were now trying to show life in an unfamiliar place. His words seemed appropriate to his own situation as he stood in the echo chamber of whooping and hollering*. META.
]]>Nuclear winter is coming. I don't know if that wordplay worked given the Boston setting for Fallout 4 [official site] seems pretty balmy but you'll have to make your peace with it because it's the best this jetlag will produce. As for *when* it's coming, the answer is 10 November, 2015.
Fallout 4 was the big finale game at the Bethesda E3 conference, with Todd Howard revealing that the studio had been working on it properly for the past 4 years, although design started in 2009, pretty much as soon as Fallout 3 was done. At the event the company showed off a lot of artwork from the game as well as sharing more detail on some of the game's mechanics, systems and setting.
]]>Either smartly getting in ahead of the crowd or showing up embarrassingly early to the party we have Oculus and their E3 press conference which is taking place today (Thursday 11 June).
]]>The on-stage presentation for The Sims 4 at E3 was a sinister piece of work. Forget your survival horror games and your gore-tastic third-person monster-choppers, this is the most disturbing video shown at the entire event. It begins with simple marketing buzz-speak - "In previous games you controlled the mind and body of your Sims. In the Sims 4, for the first time, you control their hearts." This is demonstrated by showing what look like canned animations linked to personality traits. So far, so Sims 3. Then, toward the end of the video, the presenter really takes control of a poor jock's heart.
]]>Project CARS may not have the open America and sightseeing adventures of The Crew, but it's a supremely attractive game. With a variety of motorsports and historic goals, the game sees your driver attempting to take a place in the hall of fame. To do that, you'll have to drive really really really really fast. Make sure not to crash as well, I guess, but definitely concentrate on going fast. I've analysed the E3 trailer, which arrives with a reiteration of the November release window, and you'll find a complete breakdown below.
]]>There was a time when I'd look forward to E3 for weeks in advance. It's not that the event was better in ye olde days, it's that it held the possibility of surprises from beginning to end. We know so much now, with daft sites like Rock, Paper, Scattergun reporting on every fart and sigh that emerges from yesterday's indie sensations. Where's the mystery? If you'll excuse the foot-to-ball analogy, it's like the difference between watching a World Cup in the seventies and watching one now. Back then, every overseas player was an enigmatic bundle of esoteric skills - now, you're probably wearing underpants with their name on or eating a biscuit in the shape of their head.
In a world with so little mystery, I'm not at all disappointed to find that my favourite E3 trailer so far is for a game I've already played. Elite: Dangerous continues to excite.
]]>Yager quietly took the reigns of the Dead Island series, debuting the trailer for number two earlier today (ignore Riptide), and they've also started to make some noise about the other game they've been working on since Spec Ops: The Line. Dreadnought is a game about bloody great battleships of the skies. As the freelance commander of an armada, you'll be able to customise your fleet and take them into battle against other players. No word on what single player component (if any) there will be. The trailer below has ships of decent enough size...a bit disappointing though. And then it all makes sense.
]]>The triple A team of Alice, Alec and Adam have spent the last 24 hours absorbing every trailer and piece of footage that has emerged from E3. Now they gather together with Graham 'G-Man' Smith to discuss their findings. Does the imminent arrival of a GTA V port please them? Are any of them still wearing socks or has No Man's Sky blown them clean off? Is Cuphead really the game of the show? And will Valiant Hearts' dog-in-a-war bring tears to their eyes? Read on for answers to all of those questions, and remarkable insights into the Oculus Rift and much more besides.
]]>Edit: Oculus Rift support confirmed for maximum trouser-spoiling.
Cat's out of the bag (sorry Jones) - there are synthetic and human enemies in Alien: Isolation! We knew but we hadn't seen them until now. That Sega and Creative Assembly would finally show this to be the case was one of Alice's hopes/predictions for E3 so she's currently gloating in the chatroom. It'll all come to pass soon though, world-eating Gabe and the rest. Much as I like the idea of fleeing and hiding from a single monster, the tension might be difficult to sustain over anything longer than an hour or so. That's why Isolation has (apparently randomly placed) humans and synths. The latter, pleasingly, won't scrap with the alien, querying its actions politely, while humans can be used as bait/distractions if the right tools are in place to attract ol' xeno.
]]>In comparison to the original Dead Island trailer, Dead Island 2's announcement video is more honest than Abe and Cherry Tree Washington combined. You remember that trailer, right? The one that broke a thousand hearts when it debuted and then broke them again when the game was more like a first-person Dead Rising than a mourning simulator? Dead Island 2 is just holding its hands in the air and admitting to the world that it's at the dafter end of the zombie spectrum. No introspection here - it's a game about beautiful beach bodies rotting in the sun while the world points, laughs and decapitates the poor sods.
]]>GO BIG OR GO HOME. That's the E3 motto that I just made up but I imagine it's fairly close to the instructions that studios receive from their lords and masters. A trailer is delivered and returned. "Make it louder. Make it faster. Add hyperbole. Add buzzwords. Make it bigger or go home. Also, please note that your home has been reposessed until such time as you go bigger."
Hotline Miami 2 could have spewed a hallucinogenic cocktail of violence, music and neon onto screens and into our eyes, but that would be too obvious. Instead, Miami turns up the heat by makings its E3 trailer about something entirely unexpected.
]]>Know what Far Cry needs? A villain so kerrazy that he takes a selfie right after he murders a bunch of people. Thankfully, that's precisely what the series now has in the shape of the mad despot who takes center stage on the box art and rants and raves his way through the debut trailer above. GTA V was the game to popularise the act of inappropriate post-carnage selfies, I believe, and dare we hope that Far Cry 4 will take the art to the next level? Brave new worlds opening up before us.
]]>Mirror's Edge 2 was revealed at last year's E3 with little more than a brief animation and a few bars of the game's lovely soundtrack. As part of EA's conference at E3 2014, they showed off more of the game. It was set amidst some buzzword-y waffle from the game's developers, and is still only concept footage for the game they hope to make, but there are hints of good things in the three minute video embedded below.
]]>The sequel to Tomb Raider: The Reboot has a title and a trailer. The title really is Rise Of The Tomb Raider, which I suppose is better than Raid Of The Tomb Riser, or High Rise Raider, in which Croft and some other posh sorts wage violent class warfare in a south London estate. In the actual sequel, Lara has been left so emotionally damaged by her experiences on the gusty island of the first game that she has to wear a hoodie. And see a therapist who reminds me of a non-specific Fox News anchor.
]]>There are four main types of games likely to show up in the big E3 presentations. They are Men With Guns games, Men With Swords games, Men In Cars games and Men In Shorts games, and I seem to have drawn the longsword. Having just peeped at Dragon Age, I've now plucked The Witcher 3 out of the Enormous Hat O' Videos. It's a ridiculously impressive slice of in-game footage, suggesting that CD Projekt are either liars, extremely hard-working and talented, or from the future. Perhaps this sort of giant open world (actually seeming to deserve that tag) with mythical beast hunts is considered ordinary at E3 2025 but it looks damned impressive from 2014.
]]>At this time of year it's customary for the videogame press to put together their predictions for the looming Electronic Entertainment Expo. What new games might be announced? What franchises might extend into new platforms? Who might "win"? And what of any of this can we say without breaching the NDAs for the things we already know?
Rock, Paper, Shotgun is videogame press, so we took some time today to make our own predictions. At least two of the entries count as fan fiction and one of them is a Twine game, but we think there's a very real chance that all of what we said will come true with the fullness of time. Enjoy.
]]>You think you know lines? You think you know their relative structural integrity? Newflash: YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT LINES. Battlefield Hardline? That's where it's at. Hardest lines in the biz. The business of lines, to be clear. Also it's about police and robbers, and now - finally, after roughly 167 leaks - EA's seen fit to release an official trailer. It's got a release date too: October.
]]>Delightful pre-E3 news has just arrived from the Microsoft bunker. The Kinect will be attached to all future versions of Windows 8, which will in turn be attached to every PC in the world through the magic of Cloud-based infiltration. Empty your recycle bin by performing complex semaphore! Attempt to discover the start button by cartwheeling around your front room, or scratching your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time!
That would be horrible. Thankfully it's a load of old cobblers. The news that has emerged in the form of an excitable trailer is that preposterous zombie smasher Dead Rising 3 is coming to your PC this summer. You already knew that though because of the headline.
]]>After eons of hush-hush legal drama and remarkably silent tinkering, Respawn Entertainment finally revealed Titanfall during E3. Gone are the rah-rah-rah military men - neck veins like titanium from a lifetime of barking orders - replaced by futuristic commandos and the mechs who love them. Or at least nearly bro-fist them into their cockpits. There's some unintentional silliness involved, to be sure, but this one actually looks rather promising. It has agile, Hawken-esque mechs, fleet-footed infantry, a campaign that intriguingly fuses single-player and multiplayer, and - tornado hurricane sigh of relief - it's not a Windows 8 exclusive. But how exactly does all of that come together? And how far along could the game actually be given that it was caught in the crossfire of a legal battle between Respawn and Infinity Ward until not too long ago? I spoke with Respawn's Joel Emslie to find out.
]]>Plants vs Zombies is boldly going where no popular gaming franchise has gone before: to a land of over-the-shoulder camera angles and gleefully bobbing crosshairs, whereupon things will be shot mercilessly. OK, maybe it's not the boldest move ever in the grand scheme of things, but Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is quite a departure for PopCap's vegetable stew of a tower porch defender, and it's looking admirably silly. But so far, all we've seen is a quick bit of co-op. What about large-scale (24-ish player) competitive multiplayer and the ability to play as zombies? Also, stepping back a bit, why make a shooter out of Plants vs Zombies at all? I spoke with creative director Justin Wiebe to find out.
E3 happened last week! It was full of glitz and glamour and Z-list celebrities and A-list zombies and TV TV sports and cars and also games sometimes. I was there all by my lonesome, because I hate sleep and love hoarding awful press room box lunches so I can pile their damp, discarded remains into impregnable Journalism Forts. Also, to observe, learn, and then wordpuke forecasts of certain doom for the gaming industry onto this here Internet. You heard me: DOOOOOOOM. OK, actually, we're probably going to be fine. But I do have some things to rant about, because I'm still sleep-deprived and grumpy. Also, there might be a slight chance of doom.
]]>Geralt's hit the big time. He's got his own open world, a handsomely haggard beard, and a simultaneous launch across multiple "next-gen" platforms. It's the latter, however, that could spell his undoing - or at least make his witchy charms a lot less bewitching for a sizable portion of PC gamers. Console-makers, after all, aren't too terribly fond of free updates, but CD Projekt's modus operandi is handing them out like candy. Microsoft, meanwhile, has decided that draconian DRM is back in this season, and CDP's been fighting on the opposite side of that battle for ages. Who will survive? Well, probably everyone, because we're only talking about DLC for a videogame. But, if nothing else, PC gamers don't need to worry. CD Projekt head Marcin Iwinski assured me that it'll be business as usual for Witcher 3 updates on our platform of choice, even if consoles aren't so lucky.
]]>After sitting through nearly all of E3's press conferences (and catching up on Microsoft's, which I skipped to marvel at my super cutting-edge next-gen loft sink), I came away with two raucously growling gut reactions: 1) new Mirror's Edge yes yes yes yay yes mmm-hmm yes good indeed and 2) did I just step into an alternate dimension where PC never emerged from the primordial gaming ooze? I don't mean that in the sense that PC's not the focus at E3 either, because frankly it never really has been. But come on: our platform of choice has spent years in the deepest waters of areas where Microsoft and Sony are only just beginning to dip their piggy toes. Free-to-play, DRM, cloud, servers, indies, problematic communities, etc, etc, etc. So why does it seem like nobody's even tried to learn from PC gaming's mistakes?
]]>DayZ creator Dean "Rocket" Hall recently climbed a very big mountain. Many game developers take time off by going on lavish-ish tropical vacations or catching up on two-year game/movie/strained family relationships backlogs, but Rocket - true to his nickname - ascended Mount Everest. (OK, maybe not many real rockets specifically shoot for mountains, but you get the idea. IGNORE MY FLIMSY METAPHOR.) It turns out, however, that he wasn't just on holiday. Sure, DayZ's still got a bit of a way to go, but Rocket has his sights set on something new. And no, there won't be any zombies this time.
]]>Tcch, everyone knows you don't reveal new game IPs at E3. It's all about companies trying to out-sequel each other. Or, if you're Microsoft, being insane enough to believe that anyone on Earth is interested that they've spilt more Bing onto their Xbox dashboard. Ubisoft have elected to buck the safe-bet trend with the mighty promising Watch Dogs - an apparently semi-open world game of grand-scale hacking. Includes bringing up a frightening amount of embarrassingly personal information about passers-by at the touch of a button, stealthing into buildings by making everyone's mobile phones play up, screwing up traffic lights remotely to cause dramatic pile-ups and, somewhat sadly after all that bravura tech-twisting stuff, some trad. shooty-bang-bang. Also, graphicasability which appears to fall firmly into the 'ultra' bracket. Though whispers are this is a couple of years off, so salt may need some pinching for now.
]]>[Sound of a doorbell ringing.] "Hello there! Yes, I have a delivery for you, Mr, um, Hugh Mann." "What? That can't be right. I never ordered anything." "No, no, I'm pretty sure you did. I couldn't help but notice you're having a parade out back. It's very nice. Wouldn't want anything unfortunate to happen to it." "Er, yeah. Anyway, I guess I'll sign for this so you can go." [Gigantic rain cloud emerges from box and ravages parade.] "NOOOOOOOO." [Gabe Newell throws down his delivery cap and flees into a nearby alleyway, cackling maniacally.]
E3, ladies and gentlemen.
]]>EDIT: Ahem.
E3 is starting next week, but we aren't affected by the trifling issues of linear time. So we have for you a world unexclusive reveal of the new Mafia II trailer, The Made Man.
This is not the only place you can watch the trailer until it's released properly at E3 next week. Which means we're the same as everyone else.
Sigh.
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