Diary of an E3-Man 4

The following are raw notes taken from E3 2018 Press Conferences. They are a mixture of details and opinions. The idea to post these is to show what it’s like to furiously write down notes in an effort to turn those notes into an article as well as whatever. It also portrays whatever gut feeling towards something was felt as it happened. The first section of notes are things I wrote down after the conference was over; what were the things/thoughts that stuck with me afterwards. The second section of notes cover the more play-by-play of the conference as things were happening what was being jotted down.

Square Enix - E3 2018

Things That Stood Out After the Show:

• I bet I’m going to have enjoyed this more than most, even with a still strange Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer, I really liked the flow and giving two new games time that otherwise wouldn’t be on people's minds

• Pretty sure that took less than 30 minutes, which begs the question why did they do this at all if they didn’t have anything from Avengers or Final Fantasy 7 to show

• They showed pretty much everything at the Xbox show already which cut into the impact this could have otherwise had

• Keith David narrated, so someone over there knows a thing or two at least

• If EA didn’t fumble all over themselves like a Chris Farley skit, I bet this presentation would be getting squashed by folks

• It’s easy to forget that Square’s 2015 conference was kind of received similarly, but then people played Final Fantasy 15 and Life is Strange and Nier: Automata and Hitman and those off hand announcements turned into GOTY and much beloved titles

Re-Watch:

• I think if I was stranded in a desert I’d rather hear the dulcet tones of Keith David than ask for a drop of water

• More detail on Tomb Raider than at Microsoft

• Still really don’t know about this game, nothing is screaming at me to play this, nothing seems different from the last games except she’s a stone cold killer now

• Curious how they do this story though, are they trying to paint Lara as villainous a bit

• The combat just seems worthless, no weight to the jungle spree she’s going on, no attempt to go around the enemies

• I really enjoyed the last two entries, just not sure I need another one right now, but hopefully it hits

• I’m really happy that Final Fantasy 14 turned that hard corner it did, it’s truly a great story for all the hard work people put into rebooting the product and hitting a larger than expected audience

• FF crossing over with stuff is tried and true, so why not Monster Hunter makes sense for a Japanese company

• Similar look at Captain Spirit from Microsoft, cool they’re doing that thing free for all, shrewd business move too

• Dragon Quest 11 may be my surprise of the show thus far, I kind of forgot they were doing a new one and the design of this game gives me Dragon Quest 8 flashbacks which I wore out my PS2 playing

• Platinum working on Babylon’s Fall

• Not much info, but I’m here for Platinum Games

• Octopath Traveler gets a quick look, have been excited about this thing since the Switch announcement event, glad that thing looks great still

• I’m excited for Just Cause 4

• It seems like they know what happened with Just Cause 3 and how to attempt to onboard new players

• Hopefully the frame rate isn’t a disaster again

• It seems like weather and seasons are a big theme this year

• If Just Cause 4 lets you manipulate weather disasters (tornadoes, lighting) somehow, that would be a game changer

• I’m still confident you can grapple hook a tornado!

• The Quiet Man looks really neat

• Is this deaf John Wick?

• I really hope that the actual game has those FMV to gameplay transitions because that looked cool as hell

• Please stop showing Kingdom Hearts trailers, of course Square is going to show it at their own thing, but…

• Fast ending, quick conference, not sure closing with Kingdom Hearts leaves a punch after the release date and basically the same trailer was shown at Microsoft