Our Five E3 2016 Prediction
Good news, everyone! E3 is once again upon us. Whether we get groundbreaking trailers or game reveals or cringe-inducing banter or social awkwardness on stage, it’s going to be an interesting week. Having watched many of these before, we can’t help but feel like we can predict some of how this will play out. Here now are our 5 Predictions for E3 2016.
5. Ubisoft apologizes for misleading us, then does it all over again
Ubisoft is quickly becoming the new Peter Molyneux of E3, consistently over promising and frequently under delivering. We have lost many hours to their franchises which are generally good games, just not the same game we see at E3. Notably Watch Dogs benefitted from a stunning E3 demo back in 2014 featuring populated public areas, gusty winds, refractive lighting, and so on that were all cut or decidedly reduced when the game was finally released.
Ubisoft has been held to task for this by the gaming community and occasionally the media. Considering the tepid response the original Watch Dogs had upon release we can’t help but feel that Ubisoft will be forced to commit on the issue; vowing to never again mislead gamers on trailers, then go right the hell and do it again for Watch Dogs 2 this year.
4. Capcom’s return to form in Resident Evil 7 doesn’t stick the landing
The Resident Evil franchise regularly jumps the shark (or T Rex in the case of RE:6) and requires a significant reboot to get back on track. Resident Evil 4 was an absolute masterpiece to make amends for the insane Code Name: Veronica though since the games have veered back into looney tunes territory with wildly over the top action and plots twists that make you shout at the screen in frustration. We’ve completely lost track of the through line of this series by now (Is Umbrella still the big bad? Is Wesker still alive? Do they make this up as they go?) so to hear Capcom wants a clean slate is music to our ears.
Resident Evil 6 is video game equivalent (albeit tone deaf) of Kung Fury
But the cynics in us aren’t so sure they’re going to get it right. Between this franchise and Dead Rising, Capcom somehow manages to ruin compelling series with cartoonish characters with atrocious dialogue, wildly unrealistic action scenes that not even Neo could pull off, or a convoluted storyline presumably by drafted child laborers subsisting entirely on opioid poprocks. There’s no way they nail RE:7.
3. The Last Guardian runs out of steam
We’re as excited as anyone to see more this one especially as it somehow survived a 10 year developmental nightmare. It’s been revived twice now remarkably and some publications are even test driving parts of it in recent months suggesting we’re close to a final build. That all seems like great news.
10 years of teasing is enough… It’s not you The Last Guardian, it’s me.
But this game has been teased for so long and if recent videos are true, it doesn’t seem it has aged too well. Normally that wouldn’t matter to much to me to play a potentially great game like Shadow of the Colossus but after so many false starts we’re starting to feel hype-fatigue for this one too. Should we get our hopes up (again) only to see it disappear off the radar (again)? This game used to dominate headlines, now it’s just a footnote as we get close to the event. Perhaps we’re not the only ones ready for this story to just be over – one way or the other.
2. Sony and Microsoft try and fail to convince us to buy better hardware
The game console space is a precarious once (obviously since only a few companies operate in it). You risk the sunk cost of pushing cutting edge hardware into people’s homes at a loss hoping to recoup your losses in time with software, peripherals, and licensing. For gamers it’s intimidating too as a $300-600 investment is a significant number to get access to only one console. We hope that we pick the one that’s going to get the games we want to play and has a long lifecycle (so not the Wii U apparently).
But gamers are willing to take this leap and spend those requisite dollars when the opportunity is great. The relative advantage of moving from the SNES to the N64 was huge for 3d games or Xbox to the 360 with always on network gaming. If the step is minor, console manufacturers have a hard time making the case (see the Dreamcast).
Is slim worth the $$$?
So we’re perplexed as to why this year Sony and Microsoft seem so fired up to try to sell us on updated specs to our current machines. Did we buy inferior products in the first place? Are they expecting our systems to crash and burn soon? God forbid they start making games that work only on the Xbox One 2.0 and not the original as the gamer community would lose their collective minds and market confusion would basically destroy the console.
We’ll hear them out and try to understand why we should rebuy our existing console again, but for now we’re expecting their arguments to not be terribly compelling.
1. Nintendo continues to Producer itself
A show focused entirely on one game we can’t play for at least another year and may not be for the console we have now. What could possibly go wrong? We’re thrilled Nintendo has buckets of Wii money still laying around their offices because their strategy lifted apparently from Brewster’s Millions doesn’t make sense to just about anyone else.
Who needs games, hardware, or a sense of purpose when you’ve got quirky executives?
What else do you think we’ll see this year? Assassin’s Creed: The Movie: The Game? Bungie announces Destiny 2 to launch the same as its first DLC pack? Let us know below!
