E3 2015 - The Highs & Lows for PC Gamers

Wow, that was quite possibly the best E3 ever. Last year I joked about how every conference was a PC conference, and this year we actually got a PC conference. Combine that with all the interesting stuff gleaned from the other conferences and there’s a lot to be excited - and worried - about. But you don’t want to watch 18+ hours of conferences just to find that Dark Souls 3 trailer and discover there’s no game footage, so let GameWatcher give you the lowdown. Welcome to E3 2015 - The Highs and Lows for PC Gamers!

THE BETHESDA CONFERENCE
In which war never changes, demons have a bad time, an empress is masked, and half a conference can be spent entirely on one game and no one minds.

GOOD: Doom baby! Redesigns of the classic monsters from Imps to the Cyberdemon (even invisible Pinkies), a new double-jump and climbing ability, gruesome melee/close combat executions, you can hold all the weapons, it looks fairly non-linear, chainsaw chainsaw chainsaw. There’s a ‘SnapMap’ Map Editor and multiplayer including Domination, Horde, and Freeze Tag plus you can turn into a jetpack Revenant. Spring 2016. Once Batman is out this is my new most wanted game.

BAD: Battlecry, Bethesda’s multiplayer cel-shaded team-based where-have-I-heard-that-before online game. With so many Team Fortress 2 contenders out there it’ll take a lot to rise to the top of the pile, and I think everyone will prefer Blizzard’s Overwatch or Gearbox’s similarly-titled Battleborn to this. We’d rather play Block N Load, frankly.

GOOD: Dishonored 2! Play as Corvo Attano or grown-up heir to the Empire Emily Kaldwin! Some sort of mystical grapple-hook! Bigger stages! Brad Dourif! Hopefully this’ll be the Thief game we bloody well wanted thank you very much Square Enix!

BAD: … But no release date. Not even a vague “2016”. And no in-game footage. It’s a long way off, people.

BAD: I kind of liked The Elder Scrolls Online, but I haven’t played it even after it went free-to-play. I doubt Tamriel Unlimited will change anyone’s mind.

GOOD: Fallout 4, wow. Great character creator, third-or-first-person even in cutscenes, give Dogmeat commands, oh yeah Dogmeat, voice-acted male or female main character, glimpses of the world before the apocalypse, VATS is back, flying, jetpacks, customisable power armour, complete weapon mods, crafting including base management and buildings, raider attacks on bases, “second screen experiences are usually stupid gimmicks, but as far as stupid gimmicks this is the best f-ing one” making the only Collector’s Edition I’ve ever wanted. November 10th this year. Sold. Second place after Doom.

BAD:God, drop the Creation Engine already! Oh, and we want Fallout Shelter too!

THE MICROSOFT CONFERENCE

In which exclusives are questionable, holographs rule Minecraft, robots have round hearts, dark souls get darker, and indies are outies.

GOOD: Screw Halo 5, the show really started with Recore, a new IP from the ex-Metroid Prime team at Armature and Keiji “Mega Man” Inafune. Precious little gameplay was shown but it looked like an origin story for Dog from Half-Life 2. Cute robots with round hearts. Very interesting indeed…

BAD:… Except that we have no idea if the PC will get it. It’s only “console exclusive” to Xbox One, so we’ll see.

GOOD: More Fallout 4 news: mod support! Yay! And they’ll come to consoles too with Bethesda’s help, which could serve to bring many great mods into the spotlight.

GOOD: A little “Ambivalent” but not bad certainly: Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2. The sequel to a game no one cared about that looks exactly like the first game. Eh, new game. Some people enjoyed it. I personally didn’t, and I wanted to.

GOOD: Yes it leaked beforehand, and it was only a CGI trailer, but Dark Souls III baby! And definitely coming to PC! Suck on that, Bloodbore!

BAD: Ubisoft’s The Division wowed the crowd with a non-playable trailer version of last year’s playable demo that failed to impress anyone in 2014 because it didn’t look much different from the staged demo from E3 2013. Sarcasm! More cheap shots at this game later. Oh, the Beta’s in December and will be on Xbox One about five minutes earlier than PC/PS4.

GOOD: Rainbox Six Siege at least is looking great, even if we didn’t see much at Microsoft’s show. 5v5 multiplayer, October 13th 2015.

BAD: Gigantic is Windows 10 and Xbox One exclusive. It’s free-to-play, the beta is August, and it looks just as exciting as Battlecry.

GOOD: A load of cool, exciting indie games were shown off as part of the ID@Xbox program, with Cuphead being a particular delight once again. And most should be on PC too, although that’s being marked as an ambiguous “console exclusive”. The Fullbright Company’s Tacoma is channelling System Shock (appropriate since they’re ex-Irrational). Ashen looks like Dark Souls meets Ico. Beyond Eyes stars a blind kid and a load of colours. Those last three are definitely on PC.

BAD: DayZ creator Dean Hall dropped by to show a trailer for Ion, which is something to do with space. Under The Skin, that very confusing movie with Scarlett Johansson as an android picking up Scottish men, is less ambiguous than this game.

BAD: Rise of the Tomb Raider is looking fun and even more Uncharted-y, but it’s sinking even further into Xbox exclusivity. It was a timed exclusive, now we don’t know.

GOOD: Shame the Rare stuff won’t be on PC, but Fables Legends will be. The Lionhead co-op fantasy game will be out Holiday 2015 on both PC and XB1, and you can crossplay between both. Woo.

GOOD: Microsoft are working with both Valve and Oculus to help make Windows 10 the best platform for VR. This is good news for sure.

GOOD: The Hololens though, AR rather than VR, was the highlight of E3 for some. Booting up 2D Minecraft on a wall was cute, but putting it on a table in 3D and manipulating the world using sight and sound alone to help another player who was running around on the table? That’s awesome.

THE EA CONFERENCE

In which the Star Wars get interesting, two old favourites get new games, a devilish puppet steals the show, and we get a microcosm of the interminable wait for a new Battlefront.

GOOD: Mass Effect Andromeda. Cool title, cool trailer, the Mako’s back for sure, and Johnny Cash is confirmed. Holiday 2016. No further details, but I’m pumped already.

GOOD: Need For Speed is a stupid unnecessary reboot of a title, but it does look fun. The lighting in particular makes it worthwhile, and apparently it uses the Frostbite engine like every other damn EA game.

GOOD: You may not care, but the winner for longest title at E3 goes to Star Wars: The Old Republic - Knights of the Fallen Empire. I personally still enjoy Bioware’s MMO, certainly more than Elder Scrolls Online, although I’m not level 60 yet. It’s out October 27th and it’s free for all, woo. Only an odd Blur-made CGI trailer though, far less impressive than their original The Old Republic trailers.

GOOD: Unravel could possibly be more of a shock to me than most of Sony’s conference. EA using valuable conference time to give a big showing to a cute puzzle platformer that mixes Yoshi’s Woolly World with the feels of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Very sweet, very beautiful, we’ll be watching this closely. Well done EA.

GOOD: More PVZ:GW2. Plants on the attack, 4-player co-op “Graveyard Ops” mode, single-player against AI opponents, free content updates, Spring 2016. That’ll do, pig.

BAD: The words “40 minutes to Star Wars Battlefront will be forever etched into my brain as EA brought a dozen Sports and Mobile games to a disinterested audience, then actually brought very old and infirm football legend Pele in for literally no reason whatsoever. If you hadn’t just showed me Unravel EA I’d be burning your house down. With lemons.

GOOD: Here comes DICE to save the day as usual, first with Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. It seems to be pretty free-roaming, there won’t be any usable guns, and it’s out February 23rd 2016.

GOOD: Star Wars Battlefront. Yes there are some quibbles regarding content, but by the Force that five-minute long gameplay demo on Hoth was awesome. Highly staged, but great. 1st or 3rd person, jetpacks, vehicles including starfighters and the AT-AT, and heroes. Yes, Luke and Vader show up and have a scrap. Can’t wait. November 17th.

BAD: Seriously though, as great as Battlefront looks why didn’t we get a teaser for EA’s first proper single-player Star Wars game? Knights of the Old Republic 3, Jedi Knight III, X-Wing 3, Force Unleashed 3, some other game ending in three, or 1313 perhaps? Fine, just the online and mobile games for now then.

THE UBISOFT CONFERENCE

In which vikings die to crusaders, cats ride unicorns, superheroes fracture butts, cities come from the moon, ghosts are wild, and Aisha Tyler chats to Angela Bassett, an awkward assassin and a diminutive Frenchman.

GOOD: South Park: The Fractured But Whole is, awesome title included, a checklist of what I wanted to see from the next South Park game. A sequel to last year’s wonderful Stick of Truth, concentrating on superheroes rather than fantasy, lots of making fun of the game-making process (“yeah, everyone preorder, that’s a good idea!”), and a possibly much smaller development window!

BAD: It’s not being developed by the master RPG makers at Obsidian. Instead development has been handed to Ubisoft San Francisco, who are best known for Rocksmith. Riiiight.

GOOD: A new game that’s not an existing franchise or Tom Clancy title! For Honor is a 4v4 online combat game with a focus on melee with lots of AI teammates to make you feel like you’re in a real medieval war. Vikings, Crusaders, Samurai and Knights were shown. It looks pretty fun, certainly more so than most battle arena games at the show.

GOOD: The Crew: Wild Run was announced, an expansion for the main game. Was The Crew even on PC? It was? Wow, live and learn.

GOOD: Trials Fusion: Awesome Level Mix what is this I don’t even know.

BAD: You may have noticed now that I’ve got a big downer on The Division. Well, once again Ubisoft showed a very similar demo to the last two E3s, with the only twist being the ending – where the teammates decided to betray each other. Amusing in a staged demo, but it’ll happen every single time in the final multiplayer and it’ll get tedious. Plus all that careful planning and build-up will go right out the window. I am really not feeling this game. Time will tell.

GOOD: Still, the good news is that there will be a Beta in early 2016 with the full game due March 8th 2016. So not long to wait, although I’ll be still playing Star Wars Battlefront at that time.

GOOD: A PC-only game! Anno 2205, the latest in Ubisoft’s pretty-well-regarded series of city-building strategy titles, is coming November 3rd with a beta soon. You can be building on the Moon! And, hopefully, carry a harpoon.

GOOD: Rainbow Six Siege is still looking damn good, and apparently the demo was live gameplay. It has a lot more Angela Bassett too. Beta is on September 24th.

BAD: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate defied all expectation and had a CGI Blur Studios trailer. Gameplay to follow with Sony.

GOOD: The jury’s out on Ghost Recon: Wildlands as it currently looks like a game version of GTA5 Heists, but a new 4-player open world co-op game built around planning and choice in assaults? Could be cool. I’ll want to see what the single-player is like though, not to mention what else is there to keep everyone’s attention in this “open world”.

THE SONY CONFERENCE

In which myths become reality, space is closer than ever, controllers get unplugged, and a popular shooter series gets into bed with a rival.

BAD: The Last Guardian! Horizon: Zero Dawn, a new IP from the makers of Killzone! Dreams from Media Molecule! More Destiny! Uncharted 4! … None of which will be on PC, ever. Sigh.

GOOD: A new Hitman was announced, seemingly a prequel (I thought we’ve already had a Hitman prequel?). It’s very pretty. More details in Square Enix’s section.

BAD: It’s great that Street Fighter V is on PC too, but the beta won’t be. Oh well.

GOOD: Another No Man’s Sky show-off, another time I fail to criticise the game despite lambasting The Division for showing basically the same trailer three years in a row. This time we got to see more space battles, how vast the galaxy will be, Sentinels guarding certain areas, and destructible environments. The release date is “soon”.

GOOD: Firewatch, from the ex-Telltale team at Campo Santo, is looking both amusing and intriguing. You have a pet turtle!

BAD: It was overcompensation galore for last year’s highly criticised sausage fest with Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, as the gameplay trailer focused on a female character named Evie Frye. It looks fun but otherwise not much we haven’t seen before, and not really much actual gameplay. After the disaster that was Unity the series needs a shake-up, and Syndicate doesn’t look like it.

GOOD: The Final Fantasy VII Remake exists! Hooray! And it’s only “first” on PS4, so we have hope! Of course it’s not due out until 2018, but still…

GOOD: It wasn’t enough that Sony had two legendary vapourware games in their conference, they had to shove in a third. Yes, Half-Life 3 Shenmue III! And it’s coming to PC!

BAD: Of course it also heralded the apocalypse, as a gigantic publisher has now proven that they can get away with Kickstarter rather than risk just funding games like they usually do. If Activision does a Kickstarter for Call of Duty next year it’s on your own heads. Singularity 2 on the other hand…

BAD: Batman: Arkham Knight should be here by the time you read this, and I’ll be deep into the review. However, Warner Bros are still calling the Scarecrow Missions as “exclusive” to PS4. Since we still don’t have the Joker Challenge Maps for Arkham Asylum this could be true, and it sucks.

GOOD: Call of Duty: Black Ops III exists! Woo, I guess? Nevertheless, the 4-player co-op missions sound pretty cool. It might actually make me play it.

GOOD: Even better, Star Wars Battlefront got more new gameplay footage and it was of single-player/co-op missions set on Tatooine while Admiral Ackbar commented. Third on my list, for sure.

THE SQUARE ENIX CONFERENCE

In which the Cause is Just, Mankind is Divided, a Man is Hit, and what the hell is that guy wearing on his head?.

BAD: They mentioned something about their Collective games… I don’t know, the world’s lost interest, if they ever had it. Games like Moon Hunters look fun, but sod Collective.

GOOD: The “explain everything in great detail” trailer was stupid, but the footage was excellent for Just Cause 3. Highly destructible environments, wingsuit, and improved grapple? Yes please. December 1st, unless Avalanche suddenly realise their only two games are out within three months of each other.

BAD: Platinum Games present Concept Art: The Game! Or, Nier 2. Frank Sidebottom head aside, this probably ain’t coming to PC.

GOOD: There was a 25 minute gameplay trailer later, but even the early reveal trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided blew me away. The Dawn Engine is producing amazing detail. Set in 2029, two years after Human Revolution (and 23 years before the original), Adam Jensen is part of a task force aimed at hunting down augmented terrorists, although his real goal is infiltrating the group from the inside to get to the Illuminati. Fun fact: this is the first Deus Ex not to have a new protagonist. 4th in my list. Out Early 2016!

GOOD: The new Hitman does actually sound really interesting. Each level is a sandbox where you have total freedom to accomplish your objective as you see fit, and are rewarded for thinking imaginatively. It also has MMO aspects, as players can compete to take out a target with new missions appearing over time. It’s out December 8th apparently, astonishingly soon for a game without a subtitle.

THE PC CONFERENCE

In which our dog has his day, teases were very teasy, and PC Gamer thinks we wanted a talk show rather than a spectacular announcement fest.

GOOD: A PC gaming conference! At last!

BAD: Pacing problems, to be polite.

GOOD: Rising Storm 2: Vietnam announced from Antimatter Games. No gameplay yet, but looks fun.

BAD: Star Citizen uses motion capture! Fine, okay, now let’s see some ga- hey, wait, where are you going Roberts? Come back!

GOOD: AMD showed off some Radeons. Good, I guess? I’m not a hardware person, y’know?

GOOD: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided showed off some PC exclusive graphic effects, like global illumination, parallax occlusion mapping (worst Green Lantern villain ever) and a really technical term called “Clutter” which is actually the most impressive one.

BAD: Total War: Warhammer! Hooray! A griffin, cool! Two guys from Creative Assembly, fine, woo… wait, where are you going? Don’t pull a Roberts! Come back!

GOOD: Killer Instinct is coming to PC, and it supports crossplay between PC and consoles. It’s a good fighting game, and we still don’t have enough of them.

GOOD: Gigantic is still a bit mysterious but it’s apparently a 5v5 F2P battle arena where each time has a huge Guardian and the objective is to defeat the other team’s monster. Open beta this year.

GOOD: Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is coming to PC, like the first game did and exactly how the rest failed to do. 4K resolutions, mouse & keyboard, a bunch of new modes like King of the Hill, a lot of the graphics have been completely remade, DirectX12 support, “happy to talk about more games at a later time” (meaning sequels hopefully).

BAD: American Truck Simulator! Sean ‘Day9’ Plott did his best to make us excited, but why was it here?

GOOD: EVE: Valkyrie is still looking pretty good, but then most VR-based space sim games seem to. Please EA make an X-Wing/Rogue Squadron VR game. It’ll be separate from EVE Online in case you didn’t know.

GOOD: Dean Hall’s Ion seems more interesting now. It’s a space exploration game, but it’s not like Elite et al, it’s more about the stations and what’s inside them. Diablo-style camera, based on a game called Space Station 13. Interesting. Hopefully will be better than Space Colony and Spacebase DF-9.

GOOD: Strafe is honestly looking great, a very old-school shooter. Secrets abound, enemies with behavioural patterns, the rock monster looks pretty cute too. Procedurally generated levels in a Quake II style, persistent blood and guts, throw bugs as grenades, awesome.

GOOD: Pillars of Eternity: The White March expansion. Woo! We love the game, remember?

GOOD: Frontier’s Planet Coaster looks pretty lovely! Out 2016.

GOOD: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns introduces Guild Halls, huge structures devoted to your guild that you have to fight for and can customize once won. Even create a custom PVP sandbox. Pre-purchasing starts now for early access. Neat.

GOOD: Hitman is launching “digitally” December 8th almost in an Early Access-type way, called “World of Assassination” where the community can tweak features and evolve the content. Graphics of Absolution combined with the sandbox of Blood Money, no checkpoints. 300 NPCs potentially.

GOOD: AMD! Has… stuff. Dual VG-GBA card? Something like that. Did I mention I’m not a hardware guy? Six minutes later…

GOOD: Bohemia Interactive announced Tanoa, the new Pacific-set jungle-covered 100 square kilometres of expansion for ArmA III. “A green hell”. Excellent. Wouldn’t play it myself, but I respect the series’ fans.

GOOD: We saw a little of Beyond Eyes earlier with Microsoft, it’s quite lovely. Exploration-based, uses colours to give visual representations of non-visual stimulus. Out this summer apparently, making it the only game out in the next three months!

GOOD: Dirty Bomb is the first shooter IP actually owned by Splash Damage apparently. It’s out now for free on Steam, apparently.

GOOD: Tacoma may only be a “walking simulator” but it looks a damn fun one, with the ability to use zero gravity to fully and non-linearly explore the station.

GOOD: SOMA, the next horror title from Amnesia creators Frictional, is seemingly far more traditionally terrifying and is out September 22nd which is several years early than I expected. Neither’s news, but wanted to reiterate it.

GOOD: Single-player DayZ is in the works. Wait, is that good or bad?

GOOD: Enter The Gungeon: Binding of Isaac meets Ikaraga in co-op? Sweet. The laser-whip is amazing.

GOOD: Blizzard announced the first expansion for Heroes of the Storm as the very Diablo-based Eternal Conflict, with the Monk from Diablo III joining the game for starters. June 30th. Also announced were the three Whispers of Oblivion Prologue Missions set before the upcoming Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, and they’ll be free.

GOOD: No Man’s Sky IS coming to PC and WILL be out the same time as the PS4 version. How do they keep track of so many planets with just a ten-person team? They use robots, sent out into the void to take pictures. Just like real life!

So that’s E3 2015 in a nutshell ladies and gentlemen! For movies and more detail check out our coverage on GameWatcher, and we’ll be back for 2016! Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be updating my most wanted games list…