Bethesda and Ubisoft at E3
Bethesda's brief but satisfying show on Sunday night was framed as a tour of a theme park called Bethesdaland. That clever structure gave the publisher a way to run through announcements for existing games, as well as whip the covers off two projects under construction which turned out to be sequels to The Evil Within and Wolfenstein.
Bethesda is putting plenty of eggs in the VR basket: Fallout 4 and Doom will be entirely playable on the HTC Vive, and as later revealed during Sony's conference, Skyrim will be coming to PlayStation VR. The motion controls on the latter look a lot like the Nintendo Switch port too, which Bethesda also demonstrated in more detail. In the midst of a fairly unsurprising event, the biggest surprise was probably Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. This new standalone adventure occupies the murky middle-ground between add-on and full game, and it's due as soon as September.
The publisher finished off with its two big reveals. The Evil Within 2 was shown off through a dark, surreal trailer that feels like a bad dream. It's hard to figure out what's actually happening and how the game might play, but it certainly succeeds in setting the tone. And finally, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus brings the alternate-history fight to Nazi-occupied America with an eight-minute grotesque trailer.
During the first few minutes of the Ubisoft show, legendary Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto emerged from a cloud of smoke with a Bullet Bill gun in hand to reveal Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. At a glance it sounds like an empty corporate handshake, but the gameplay video shows what appears to be a deep tactical RPG in the vein of XCOM. Exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, it's due in August.
Next up was confirmation of seemingly yet another poor entry to the series - Assassin's Creed: Origins. As the rumor mill suggested, this year's entry is a prequel set in ancient Egypt. The franchise's influence can also be seen in the newly-announced Skull and Bones. It's almost like the naval combat of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag has been spun off into its own game, and that's definitely not a bad thing. Far Cry 5 looks like a hoot as well, as players spark a revolution against a doomsday cult that's taken over rural Montana. A gameplay trailer shows off a mix of stealth, shooting and bossing around allies like a sniper, fighter pilot and a dog buddy named Boomer.
Like its predecessor, The Crew 2 gives players an open-world version of the United States as a motorsports playground, but this time it throws in some new toys, in the form of boats and planes. For its third year at E3, South Park: The Fractured But Whole got a new trailer that didn't really tell us anything new. However, the unexpected news out of the franchise is that a mobile game with a similar combat style is in the works.
And finally, Ubisoft wanted to remind us that there's still life in Beyond Good & Evil 2. The sequel to the cult classic was originally announced back in 2008 but there are still no details on gameplay or a release date, but it is known that the prequel project is in active development.