Good Morning Folks! I’ve found myself weirdly checked out most of the time during this “Not E3” period. Normally this is my Christmas catalog as I drool over all of the trailers of games to come. However as the various shows have gone whizzing by, I am having trouble even catching up on the news. One thing that is not this way however was the Microsoft and Bethesda show that took place on Sunday afternoon. This show I absolutely watched live and with much anticipation. Microsoft has uniquely placed itself through acquisitions as being the arbiter of good stuff for the coming years. There is part of me that is deeply troubled that a single company owns all of these franchises. Then there is another part of me that loves that I can start a game on my Xbox Series X and then continue it on my PC… and maybe even get in some playtime from bed on my phone via XCloud all without missing a beat.
Another thing that I love is the GamePass ecosystem because it gives me easy access to a large list of titles that I might have missed otherwise. This is really where XCloud shines for me because it gives me fast streaming access to games with a very low time commitment. While I am laying in bed at night, trying to figure out something to do until sleep claims me… this is often when I hook up my controller and try something out on the phone. It will take a lot of effort to really dislodge me from the Steam ecosystem, but just having games available and ready for me to play… as part of my existing GamePass subscription is a good start. I really dig that they are supporting smaller games in addition to all of the big titles because it means that there is a regular flow of new titles coming into the system. What I do wish is that they would include things like ESO Plus into GamePass to expand the player base of Elder Scrolls Online, or a World of Warcraft sub when the Blizzard purchase completes.
There were a massive number of titles that interested me, so here is a quick run down with some discussion about each.
Free Riot Game Champions
I have to admit this one blew my freaking mind. I don’t play League of Legends all that much anymore, but when I did… I regularly liked trying out new champions. Essentially if you have GamePass you are getting every champion in every Riot game unlocked as part of that subscription. This legitimately makes me very interested in diving back into the game and checking out all of those champions that were released since 2015ish when I last gave the game any attention. Granted I hated playing solo queue, and mostly only really enjoyed bot games… but still had a certain measure of enjoyment doing that. I wonder if Wild Rift supports a controller.
Persona Games
This was another massive mic drop because fans have been begging for a PC release of Persona 5 Royal since the game was released. As part of GamePass you are getting access to Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal on both Xbox consoles and PC. I’ve yet to really beat any of these games and I know that I should really attempt to get into P5R. There is just something about the daily chores section of the game that always kills my interest. I want to experience the story, but don’t want to have to shuffle through the dross.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox
I am extremely interested in this game. It pretty much looked like what you would get if you took Castlevania and took away the vampires and skeletons and instead swapped in elder horrors and void creatures. I love Symphony of the Night and this is giving me DEEP vibes. This is a perfect example of a game that is probably going to fall between the cracks, but absolutely will have new life because folks are going to play it as part of GamePass.
High On Life
Okay, I still unironically love Rick and Morty. This game basically seems like you take the weird as fuck space stuff from that cartoon and make an entire shooter-based video game out of it. The catch is you have talking sentient weapons. This legitimately makes me wonder if someone played Cyberpunk 2077… got Skippy and then thought… let’s make an entire damned game around this. I am absolutely at least going to give it a spin and check out whether or not I personally find this mess enjoyable or not.
Scorn
I like HR Geiger and I like Body Horror, so I think I am probably uniquely in line with the goals of Scorn. This has been appearing periodically at shows for quite some time now, and it just seems to keep getting higher resolution. I am mostly intrigued by the game at this point and want to see it in action. Do I think this is going to be a good shooter? No, not really, but I also don’t think that is the point of the game. It seems like avoiding combat is going to be the name of the game more than anything. Do I think this is going to be one of my favorite games? Nope! However again because it is on GamePass I am absolutely going to check it out.
Forza Horizon Hotwheels
So they spent way more time during the show on the version of Forza for people who get horny over cars, but I was happy to see we are getting a Hotwheels expansion for Horizon. If you have never played a Horizon game you really should. They are this weird fun arcadey car MMORPG for lack of a better explanation. They are just fun as hell to drive around in and unlock new cars, and I am super on board with taking my cars and now racing them on literal Hotwheels tracks.
Redfall
I am deeply interested in this game, but also probably deeply out of the core demographic. My hope is that this is going to be a game that is solo-player-friendly. My expectations are that it is going to be all groups all the time, and expecting you to bring your ready-made group of exactly four friends into the game with you. I already struggle at matching up with people to play games with, and I doubt Redfall is going to be the game that changes that. Between timezone constraints and my own anxiety over player expectations of me… yeah no this is going to be a fraught mess for me personally. I still think it looks cool as hell though, so I guess I will watch this evolve over time.
Ravenlok
I am getting deep Legend of Zelda meets Harry Potter vibes from this game and I am on board with that. Again this looks like it is going to be one of those many smaller titles that come out and the fact that it is on GamePass gives me the freedom to just check it out guilt free. The only thing that is really tweaking me a bit is the mix of voxel models and traditional models that seems to be going on. Like I enjoy voxel graphics, but I prefer if games completely commit to them like something along the lines of The Touryst. I just hope that the actual game while playing it does not seem jarring as the two model styles clash.
Hollow Knight Silksong
I would likely be disowned by several of my friends if I did not at least talk a bit about Silksong. This is a game that so many of the AggroChat folks have been anxiously waiting for. I am not sure what it is about Hollow Knight but it never really clicked with me. I think partially it is that the game requires so much more technical prowess than Symphony of the Night, and by reference Bloodstained Ritual of the Night. That is pretty much my perfect form of the Metroidvania. Ash and Kodra, however, love the skill-based games, and more specifically they both seem to enjoy the randomization mods for Hollow Knight. I am hoping this is the game that they have been anxiously waiting for. Me… I’ve not decided to devote the amount of time needed to actually get good at Hollow Knight so I could decide if I enjoy it or not.
Flintlock The Siege of Dawn
This is another game that I am cautiously interested in. I say cautiously because I am getting deep Dark Souls vibes from this game. Everything about the setting and lore makes me interested, but generally speaking, don’t want to work as hard at combat as a Dark Souls game wants me to work. I play games to relax, not cause more anxiety. Jedi Fallen Order bridged this gap because I just played the game on a lower difficulty setting and it stopped feeling like a Dark Souls game. So I guess I have hope that maybe just maybe this game will work for me as well. Again the low investment of it being on GamePass means I can boot it up… check it out for a bit and then decide if I like it or not.
Diablo IV
Oof do I have some feelings about Diablo IV. Of all of the Blizzard games, Diablo is the franchise that I have cared about the most over the years. First, it was weird as hell to see Blizzard games now just being included as part of the Microsoft conference. Second, I have been on this emotional rollercoaster lately thanks to the collosol fuckup that is Diablo Immortal. The team working on Diablo IV has come out trying to stem the bleeding and guarantee that this game will not be an egregiously monetized pay-to-win mess… but I am not sure if I am willing to trust them yet. What I saw in this trailer and the other trailers at the show excited me, but also made me think that maybe this game is going to be a direct competitor for Guild Wars 2. A lot of the big open-world multiplayer stuff felt a lot like events and zone metas in GW2. I am sad that there will not be a Crusader at launch, but generally speaking, I can be happy with a Barbarian for the time being.
Starfield
This was the reveal that I think most of the folks who tuned in were waiting for. I get that “No Mans Skyrim” is a meme, but this felt way more like a Fallout game to me. I have deep concerns for this game, namely that I think maybe Bethesda bit off more than they can chew with the whole “1000 planets” thing, including full space flight and seemingly a whole dogfighting game. That also gives me pause because I like the concept of spaceflight… but I don’t actually like flying ships. I really do not like flight sims, so I am hoping that this is very “starfox” in its interpretation of space flight. Either that or I hope there is an option to just let the computer calculate the space combat because I am not really interested in doing much of that. I would be down with the equivalent of VATs but for ship-to-ship combat. Planetary exploration and the improved gunplay though… I am all on board with that.
A Solid Show
This year’s Microsoft Bethesda show was legitimately one of the better ones I have seen over the years. There were so many things that I was either extremely interested in or tangentially enough to play them with GamePass. I need to spend some time and sift through the other presentations and cherry-pick some of the other gems. I might turn that into a single post covering multiple shows. If you have been more plugged into the “Not E3”, which of the shows should I check out? What games do you think I should watch trailers for? Drop me a line below.