The Bounty of Not-E3 2020

This time of year is normally a magical time for gamers. It is during June that we traditionally get a bunch of announcements surrounding E3 that ultimately set the expectations for what we should be anxiously watching for the remainder of the current year and most of the next. However there have been a few forces at work that have changed this dynamic significantly since the heady days of the early 2010s. Firstly a number of companies have broken out from the show and started doing their own thing on a more regular basis. Secondly we have a global event like Covid 19 that is causing pretty much everything to be cancelled.

As a result there is a void to be filled and it seems as though we have a wealth of options to fill it. Instead of getting a few big shows from various publishers or console manufacturers, we get an entire summer filled with smaller shows that really started reaching a fever pitch this week. Traditionally I have done coverage of each of the big shows, but quite honestly there is too much to cover at this point and not enough desire to do so. One of the interesting things I have noticed this year is how the various show options have more or less democratized access to smaller studios. As a result we are seeing a lot of A and AA studios punching well above their weight limit and going toe to toe with AAA announcements.

However before I get into specific games I feel like it is important to lay out the landscape. Here is a list of the shows that I am aware of, each of which filling the same sort of niche that the traditional E3 shows have. I have links to videos/vods if available currently and links to what information I do have for everything else.

Schedule of Shows that I am Aware of

• Wholesome Direct – May 26th
• IGN Expo
  • Day One Coverage – June 10th
  • Day Two Coverage – June 11th
  • Day Three Coverage – June 12th
  • Day Four Coverage – June 15th – 1:15 CST start
• Sony PS5 Reveal – June 11th
• The Escapist Indie Showcase – June 11th
  • Post Show Day 1 – June 12th
  • Post Show Day 2 – June 13th
• Black Girl Gamers Summit – June 13th
• Guerilla Collective
  • Day One Coverage – June 13th
  • Day Two Coverage – June 14th
  • Day Three Coverage – June 15th – 11 am CST start
• PC Gaming Show – June 13th
• GamesRader Future Games Show – June 13th
• Untitled IGN Event – June 16th
• Untitled IGN Event – June 18th
• EA Play Live 2020 – June 18th
• Day of the Devs – Part One – June 22nd
• New Game Plus Expo – June 23rd
• Untitled IGN Event – June 24th
• Untitled IGN Event – June 25th
• CD Project Red Night City Wire – June 25th
• Nacon Connect – July 7th – 12:00 pm CST start
• Ubisoft Forward – July 12th
• Day of the Devs – Part Two – July 20th
• Microsoft Xbox 20/20 – July TBD

There are a handful of events that IGN talks about on this schedule, but they don’t seem to be “named” like the Expo days so I have slipped those in separate from the IGN Expo block. The short of this is that we have a massive block of shows available if we so wish to partake. For those of us who never actually attended E3, but were instead limited to the pre-game that happens with the publisher shows… this is effectively like getting three different E3 periods. It is making me wonder if we are going to see a similar burst of shows around the time that GamesCom and PAX West would have normally been happening.

On With the Games

As I said before there were way too many games being announced to really talk about them all, so instead I am going to talk about a handful of games that stood out for one reason or another. I’ve not managed to make my way through ALL of the content to this point, and now have mostly just been focused on watching individual trailers since some of the shows have way more “couch chat” element than I care to partake of.

First up in the list of things that I want to talk about is Godsfall, which up until the PC Gaming Show I had only actually seen information surrounding it related to the PlayStation 5 release. The PC demo reel showed off significantly more of the world which is good, because I was getting to the point where I was a bit afraid that it might be an arena game. From the look and sound of it, this game is essentially Destiny but with melee combat. I am significantly more interested in it knowing that it is coming out on the PC, given that I tend to prefer this sort of game on that platform. Still very much looks like a higher resolution SkyForge.

This game only means something if you were either a Sega Master System kid, or were friends with a Sega Master System kid. There once was a department store chain called Montgomery Ward, and in it they sold Sega an TurboGrafx systems… and I spend so much time while my mom shopped hanging out and playing Alex Kidd. Years later I eventually owned a Sega Master System and the Master Gear Adapter for my Game Gear and these games are criminally underappreciated. Looking forward to playing this in a prettier form and hoping it holds up as well as my memories of it.

I feel like I know next to nothing about this game. I’ve done a bit of digging and it seems that this is going to be a third person single player action roleplaying game, but all of the trailers I have seen to date mostly just focus on cinematics of the World of Darkness setting. I am very interested because Werewolf: The Apocalypse was without a doubt my favorite of the World of Darkness settings, so with Bloodlines 2 coming out soon I am super down to see this setting get its due. I guess we will have to wait until July 7th when Nacon is set to show off some footage.

I’ve never played one of the Mafia games, but I have to admit this trailer for the reworked first game really interested me. I always assumed incorrectly that the Mafia series was more Grand Theft Auto than story driven tale, and because of that I had more or less ignored it. With the first game getting a remaster treatment, and the second game having already gotten this… I feel like it might be a good time for me to sit down and play through the entire thing.

I’ve been in the alpha process for Torchlight III, previously Torchlight Frontiers for quite some time. The thing is however it was NDA bound and as a result I have not been able to talk about it much. During the PC Gaming Show, they shadow dropped the early access release and… what can I say… it is VERY early access. If you are interested in this game I would suggest maybe giving it a few weeks to stabilize before diving in. I spent most of Saturday getting disconnected or not being able to log in generally, and I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon getting disconnected after every quest. Its a good game, but very raw still and I question if they are maybe rushing it out the door a bit since there appears to still be the same infrastructure issues I experiences when a new version released and everyone flocked to test again.

This is a quirky game that appears to be everywhere right now and has appeared on multiple shows. I vaguely remember Ash talking about this briefly when we did the Pax South 2020 coverage show as it was apparently one of the Indie Megabooth titles. The idea is that you have a couple versus a hostile planet, and the game appears to move back and forth between ARPG type segments and more traditional menu driven JRPG style combat. There are also sequences that were shown that reminds me of a more Bioware style dialog choice story driven gameplay, so honestly right now I am a bit confused as to how the entire thing performs. That said it has made me interested enough to start watching what comes out about it. I dig the art style, and I did the concept of a romantic couple setting out on their own against a harsh environment.

While in the case of Godsfall new information made me significantly more interested, I have to say the New World trailer has made me significantly less interested. I did not see a lot of game-play that actually looked interesting to me. What I did see instead was a bunch of siege game-play that reminded me of the big battles from Shadowbane, a game I was decidedly not into. I am hoping that this is not a PVP siege game that they just added PVE players in place of player characters, because the sizzle reel definitely looks like that. Public testing however will begin in just a few weeks, so I guess I will be able to see better footage of how the moment to moment feels at that point. For now I am super cautious about this maybe not being a game I am going to care about.

A Whole Lot of Games

Those were a few of the games that interested me. However as I said before there is a giant insurmountable wall of new games to talk about and as a result I only covered a small handful. Did you get to watch any of the shows over the weekend? If so what were some of the games that you were interested in that I didn’t cover? Drop me a line below with some of your favorites.