E3 2018: What we are hoping for

Written by The GN Staff on 6/8/2018 for AV   PC   PS4   SWI   WiiU   XONE  

It's that time of year again. That time of year when we ask ourselves, "Is E3 still relevant?" What can I learn from the Electronics Entertainment Expo that can't be disseminated throughout an online news cycle that runs at a full sprint, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? What's the point of gathering a bunch of big-wig AAA devs and high-falutin indies for a week at a convention center in Los Angeles? Well, we can't answer all of those questions. It's certainly easier for you to view every trailer and tent pole showcase from the comfort of YouTube in your living room. But as to whether E3 is still quote-unquote relevant, well, we know one thing for sure: It generates excitement like no other event in the gaming industry. There are other gaming conventions that know how to sell out tickets, too. There are other gaming conventions that have large logos stretched across enormous banners on the building's facade. But E3, for whatever reason, is still able to get a bunch of people excited about this multibillion dollar industry that we've grown up with, scouring the internet (or just Canadian Walmart) for leaked game reveals, setting Slack chat rooms across the planet on fire with friendly and unfriendly debate, with ordinary gamers trying to figure out if so-and-so's blurry pictures or shady sketches are credible, or if those unannounced game trademarks will amount to anything on stage this year, and even having people craft Excel spreadsheets for worldwide time zones of each major company's pre-E3 showtimes. 

So, is E3 still relevant? We can't answer that for you. But it does—as it does every year—get our staff churning through our own hopes and ideas for this hobby we all know and love. Here's what we hope to see at E3 2018. And take into account that we mostly wrote these up a couple weeks ago, without the benefit of the pre-E3 rumor mills and leaks and fake news that gets cranked up to a high heat in the days running up to the actual event. With that in mind, some of these hopes have already been addressed or even dashed. So let's have a look now, and then revisit these after E3 has run its full course to see just how right—and inevitably just how absolutely wrong—our predictions were.

John Yan

• Starfield: We keep hearing rumors about a new IP from Bethesda. I'm really hoping this is the year that Bethesda's take on a space RPG comes to fruition.
• Fallout by a third party developer: New Vegas is one of my favorites and I'd love to see another studio take the Fallout 4 engine and make something out of it. (Hey this came true!)
• Backwards compatibility for the PlayStation 4 Pro: If there's one way for Sony to get me to buy a Pro, it's for them to say they will let you play PS3, PS2 and PSOne games with them. PSNow be damned.
• A VR headset to compete with the Vive: I'm really souring on how HTC handles things. I'd like to see a VR headset from another company that utilizes the Lighthouse setup with better field of vision and higher resolution.

 

Randy Kalista

• An honest to goodness launch date for Squadron 42. See, I’m not even asking for the whole Star Citizen enchilada. Just the part holding Mark Hamill hostage. I don’t have high expectations. I don’t have any expectations. I just want developer Chris Roberts’s whole thing to stop looking like an elaborate scam. I want him to make all the skeptics, myself included, have to shut up.
• This one’s a Hail Mary. I don’t even know which developer would humor the thought, let alone assume the risk. But I want a big budget video game to rekindle my love of modernist and postmodern literature. I want a Chuck Palahniuk brawler on a AAA budget. Or a Grapes of Wrath farming simulator running on, like, the Frostbite engine. Or a Fahrenheit 451 with Far Cry’s fire-spreading physics. Or a feverish travelogue with Jack Kerouac riding shotgun from American Truck Simulator devs. They don’t even have to be all that faithful to the books. I just want a monied developer to be audacious enough to try.

 

Dave Gamble

• F1 2018 will have VR. I’m a member of the “never go back” crowd that can never go back to flat racing after experiencing auto racing in VR. I miss the F1 series, but I just can’t see going back to such a weak impression of that world when I have the incredible immersion if VR on other high quality sims?.
• Red Dead for PC. C’mon, what did we do to deserve this shunning?

 

Eric Hauter

• In light of the mind shattering Next Generation DLC for Star Trek Bridge Crew, I would like to see even more content added to this amazing multiplayer game. I wouldn’t mind seeing some mission packs added, or even some away mission content. I have always thought that Bridge Crew could be thought of more as a platform than a game, and with such a rich universe to draw on, the possibilities are limitless. It would be amazing to see Red Storm iterate on this property in the same way that the Star Trek MMO has, linking back to obscure bits of lore and expanding outward to include a vision of free exploration.
• I have also been pining for more Fallout. After watching the recent trailer for the amazing looking Fallout Miami mod, my eyes were really opened to how many interesting corners of the world have not been explored in the main titles of the franchise. I would love to see a Fallout: San Francisco, exploring the history of the Shi, the descendants of marooned Chinese submariners that were beached in the bay (look it up!). Or maybe, by some miracle, the long rumored Fallout: New Orleans could be resurrected. There is so much flavor left to be explored in the United States through the lens of a retro-future apocalypse.
• And of course, I want to see much, much more from Beyond Good and Evil 2. That team is swinging for the fences, and I’m dying to see what they come up with.

 

Nicholas Leon

• I really want to see some more info on Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. I haven't seen much since the 30 minute footage I reported on a few weeks ago, and I'd really like to see something else about it.
• The Last Of Us II. Need I say more? I'm not usually the type to enjoy or even want sequels to critically acclaimed games such as The Last Of Us, but I'd like to see what more the devs have done with the gameplay. The first one was great, but I want to do more than just depressingly roam around the American wasteland.
• My final, and this is stretching it, hope is that we get to see something from Cyberpunk 2077. This has been my most-anticipated game for quite a while now, and I'd like to see how far CD Projekt Red has gotten on their follow-up to the Witcher 3

 

Nathan Carter

• The remake of Resident Evil 2 was announced a few years ago and Capcom released the fantastic Resident Evil 7 last year. I hope this year we finally get our first official reveal of the Resident Evil 2 remake complete with a release date. Fingers crossed that the Resident Evil 2 remake is more like the Gamecube Remake of the original game and not more action nonsense like Resident Evil 5 or 6.
• Bethesda announces Doom 2. Doom is one of my all time favorite franchises along with Mortal Kombat (more on that later). I have played Ultimate Doom, Doom 2 and Doom 64 hundreds of times and it never gets old. Combine that with the thousands of custom Wads and Doom is a series you could play for many many more years to come. With that said, Doom 3 was a huge disappointment for me. Doom 4 or Doom 2016 literally made me cry tears of joy. This is the game I had waited 20 years for. It was fast, fun and had tons of replayability and I need more. Hopefully we get a sequel to the game and it's announced at Bethesda's conference
• There is a very very good chance that Netherealm Studios will announce Mortal Kombat 11 at E3 or shortly before it. However, MK11 isn't necessarily what I want since the announcement is almost a given. As I mentioned above, Mortal Kombat is one of my favorite videogame franchise of all time next to Doom and Mortal Kombat X was a massive disappointment for me. Between the horrible cast, dull and mess of a story, forgettable music and stages along with the fact that everything is just so washed out with the black and brown colors, the whole game for me was not nearly as good as Mortal Kombat 9. I mean seeing Cassie Cage getting the Roman Reigns treatment and defeating Shinnok because of the "Green Aura" nonsense was so terrible. What I want the most is for NRS to bring back the characters that fans have been begging for. Characters like Li Mei, Fujin, Sareena, Frost, Kabal, Stryker, Jade and some of the 3D era characters need their time to shine again. It's more than time again for characters like Sonya, Jax, Johnny Cage, Kung Lao, Reptile, Ermac and such to sit this one out.

 

Russell Archery

• I would love to see anything Borderlands 3 related.  While FPS isn’t my go to genre, I have put some time into several different FPSs over the years, none more so than the Borderlands series…and yes, that includes The Pre-Sequel.  Ever since finishing Borderlands 2 a while back I’ve been chomping at the bit for a Borderlands 3. While I did enjoy The Pre-Sequel for what it was, it didn’t quite fill that sequel-shaped hole in the series for me.
• Something I’m hoping to see is some sort of update or info on the Nintendo Switch Pokemon game.  I’ve seen the rumors floating around online and I honestly hope it isn’t just a remake of previous generations, or at the very least the first three as we already have remakes of the Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn games.  Personally I’d like to see the next generation on the Switch, but it also wouldn’t surprise me that Nintendo might save that for the 3DS.

 

Sean Colleli

• Doom 2: Hell on Earth. Id and Bethesda already revealed Rage 2 and they usually have two big reveals at E3. It’s been two years since the Doom reboot and ever since I rolled the credits on that game I’ve wanted exactly more of that campaign. Hopefully Doom 2 also comes with a more holistic snapmap level builder and a multiplayer that plays more like a traditional arena shooter.
• It’s probably not going to happen but I’d love to see something solid about System Shock 3. Warren Spector and Otherside Entertainment have supposedly been working on this thing for 3 years and all we’ve gotten so far is concept art. With Night Dive Studios “reorienting” their development on the System Shock 1 remake and pushing the release back to 2020, it’s time for fans and Kickstarter backers to get some news on Shock 3.

 

Kevin O'Connell

• The first two Borderlands 3, and Gears of War 5 are games that absolutely have to bring back the glory of their names. Borderlands 1 & 2 are two of the best and most popular FPSs out there and after the oxygen-less flop of the Pre-sequel, need to have a proper third game in the trilogy. Gears is in need of a better game than the last one in the worst way. The story was mediocre, the team's personalities were bland, and - let's face it - the standard hide-and-shoot is getting severely old.
• Lastly, it would be nice to hear about a new Mortal Kombat game. The last one was really good and aside from a weak campaign story with the inability to chose a wider range of fighters, it is as good a MK game you will find. Seeing MK 11 would be a welcome sight.

 

Charles Husemann

• I'm hoping that Microsoft announces a full slate of first party titles that will be available this fall.  I'm talking Halo 6, Crackdown 3, and a new Forza game. The Xbox One X is a great console but there's absolutely nothing on the market that takes advantage of all of that power and I'm hoping that Phil Spencer announces a whole host of game that will be released this fall.  This would even include a teaser of a new Gears of War game.
• High quality VR titles - We need more quality VR titles.  Beat Saber, Born, and Skyrim VR are all great but we need the industry to start building some momentum with more AAA and high quality indie VR games.
• Free Space 3 - If Star Citizen can raise that much money then surely someone should be able to get enough money cribbed together to release a sequel to one of the best space combat games ever.
• Half Life 3 - A man can dream right?