Gamescom, the world's largest gaming convention, doesn't officially start until tomorrow morning, but earlier today Microsoft took the stage to offer a preview of their upcoming releases. The press conference ran for about 90 minutes, and while Microsoft only brought a couple of big surprises, they did show new footage for a number of previously announced games. If you're interested, you can watch the West coast crew commentate along with the press conference, or you could check out the Gamescom trailers that Alex has been been posting up on the site all day.
But if you only have time to read an article quickly, well, I'm writing this for you. Here are some of the things that stood out to me.
Exclusive Games
I feel like we've been talking a lot about the nature and value of platform exclusivity, and Microsoft used this press conference as an opportunity to show that the company is still invested in first-party development and traditional console exclusives. While there were some third party, multi-platform titles at the event (like Dark Souls 3, Homefront: The Revolution, and Just Cause 3), Microsoft spent a lot of time showing off games only available on Xbox One. In fact, the show opened with the trio of Microsoft-published games that skipped E3: Quantum Break, Crackdown 3, and Scalebound.
Quantum Break comes from Remedy, the studio behind the first two Max Payne games and last generation's Alan Wake, and it shows. The game is a third person shooter that gives the player the ability to freeze areas of space and time in combat, and it will ship with a TV series on the disk. So yeah, very, very Remedy. It looks like both the game and the show will star Shawn Ashmore, Lance Reddick, Aidan Gillen, and Dominic Monaghan, which is definitely a bigger collection of known talent than the company has used in the past. I'm definitely curious about how all this will all turn out, but there was definitely something a little tiring about watching another trailer filled with third-person cover-shooter combat. The time control stuff might mix it up enough to keep it fresh, but I'm definitely ready for another paradigm shift in the shooter genre.
We've known that there would be a new Crackdown game for a while now, but we didn't really know who was making it or what would differentiate it from previous entries in the series. Well, now we know that the game is Crackdown 3, the developer is Reagent Games (a new studio founded by the director of the first Crackdown, Dave Jones), and the new twist on the franchise is destructibility. The trailer showed lots of explosions and a number of giant buildings falling to the ground dramatically, and the developers cite the Xbox One's cloud computing as a necessary component for this level of destruction. The trailer also gives a little bit of clarity for the game's structure: Crackdown 3 will allow players to tackle any of a big number of critical targets, and each of these targets is tied to some other objective or element of the game world. It actually sounds like an updated version of the system in the first Crackdown, where each criminal lieutenant provided a bonus for their gang's boss, and the boss would lose that bonus if you took said lieutenant out.
The Scalebound trailer had a dragon and a kid wearing headphones and this kid was like "hey, use your words dragon friend" and then there was some EDM and the kid did some action moves and he had a dragon arm???? Okay, okay. Okay. Lemme slow down. Scalebound is a Platinum-developed open-world RPG where you fight alongside your dragon against enemies small and large, collect and use loot, and team up with up to three other players to take on really big bosses. I got a lot of the same vibe that I felt during the Horizon: Zero Dawn trailer: This feels like some folks who really like the basic idea of taking down big, armored Monster Hunter-style creatures, but want to offer that experience in a game with a more traditional RPG structure and with faster-paced combat design. Time will tell how well that works. Also, I kept waiting for the player to get on the dragon and fly a little. Was anyone else waiting for that? That would've been cool.
Microsoft also announced a third season for free-to-play fighting game Killer Instinct, and the company debuted a new fighter who will immediately be made available: Rash from Battletoads. (Rash is the one who wears sunglasses. And yes, yes he does use one of those hoverbike things in an attack).
Oh, and Halo was there, too!
There was one first-party game presentation that fell flat on its face though, and that was the segment on Halo 5: Guardians. Two "shoutcasters" took to the stage, put on their eSports voices, and started to commentate a pre-recorded highlight reel of a match between two top Halo teams, and it just didn't work. I get wanting to highlight the competitive multiplayer, and I even understand the desire to chase after that hot eSports action, but this presentation didn't serve either of those purposes well. It didn't have the clarity that a simple features trailer would have had, it didn't actually explain how Halo 5 would support competitive play in new and important ways, and for all of the enthusiasm and volume of the commentators, it didn't even have the tension and drama of an actual live Halo match. And it just went on forever.
The worst thing is that the stuff that Brad, Dan, and Drew talked about in their E3 Halo 5 Unfinished video was cool. The new Warzone mode seems interesting, and I hear that the single player mode has all sorts of weird stuff, like issuing orders to your NPC squadmates. Show that stuff! And if you're going to highlight the competitive scene, do it in a way that actually communicates the value of that scene and explains how Halo 5 is being designed with those players in mind.
Oh, also, Microsoft closed the show with the announcement of a Creative Assembly helmed Halo Wars 2. Yeah, I just... I don't know, y'all. I've got nothing here, it's just... They were gonna end that conference, and then they did the whole "Oh, and one more thing," and then their one more thing was a Brute from Halo holding some sorta torch and mumbling something I couldn't make out and then "HALO WARS 2." That's a thing that happened in 2015. And who knows, maybe that game will be great! We'll see.
Quality of Life Improvements and Other Odds and Ends
Microsoft additionally announced a couple of features meant to make the overall Xbox One experience better for users.
The backwards compatibility that was announced at E3 will roll out for all Xbox One users in November. There will be over 100 games available at launch. Microsoft also announced that, going forward, their "Games with Gold" program will offer two backwards compatible Xbox 360 games every month. The 360 has a hell of a catalog, so there could be some great stuff given away in the future.
Earlier this year, Microsoft released an Over-the-Air tuner for the Xbox One, allowing users to attach a TV antenna to their console and stream local TV through their system. Now, those users will be able to use their Xbox One as a DVR for that TV content too. Never miss an episode of [fine CBS property] ever again! (The last CBS show I watched was The Mentalist. That was a good show. What. It WAS. Leave me alone.)
Independent and Early Access Games
There was also some time spent showing off some upcoming independent and "Game Preview" (read: Early Access) titles. Among those, these caught my eye:
- We Happy Few is coming to Game Preview this holiday, and then getting a regular release in 2016. We Happy Few is a first person survival game that successfully met its Kickstarter goal back in June, and it's being made by Compulsion Games, the studio behind the stylish PS4 launch game Contrast. Unlike other games in the "first person survival" genre, though, We Happy Few sets the player in a creepy, well-inhabited urban environment, and the primary threat are the city's citizens. The whole thing has a sort of 1960s British psychedelia style about it. It reminds me a lot of Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, and that's always a good thing.
- Koji Igarashi stood on a stage with a whip and a cowboy hat and announced that Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will offer players cross-play Xbox One and Windows 10 versions of the game, presumably for the game's asynchronous multiplayer features. Which is a plus, definitely, but mostly I was excited to see Koji Igarashi stand on a stage with a cowboy hat and a whip.
- Mojang (Mojang?) showed off Cobalt, a 2D side-scrolling action game with single player, co-operative, and competitive modes. The bits of competitive gameplay shown was definitely reminiscent of some other games in the couch-competitive genre, like TowerFall and Samurai Gunn. But I'm always curious to see what Mojang does, and it's nice to know that Microsoft is letting the studio pursue projects that aren't just Minecraft.
Odds and Ends
There were a few other things worth mentioning, too:
- We now know that Rise of the Tomb Raider will be coming to PS4 in 2016, but that didn't stop Microsoft from showing some new gameplay footage of Lara shooting and knifing dudes. Which is fine, it's fine it. It is. Just... I would love to see a tomb or two? Ah well, maybe next time.
- I think I'm finally healed up from Bloodborne, because I definitely felt the desire to play Dark Souls 3. There was a big skeleton face. I'll bet I'll have to stand precariously close to that thing and hit the attack button a bunch while my camera totally breaks. Pretty excited.
- A new Just Cause 3 trailer was shown, and Microsoft announced that players who purchase the game on Xbox One will also receive a free copy of Just Cause 2. But other than that, there was no real "Xbox Exclusive" content attached to this. Which was sort of rad, because it kept the focus on that cool trailer. I guess the lesson to learn is: If at any point you think your press conference might be sagging a bit, just toss a Just Cause trailer in there. That'll do the trick.
I know that all seems pretty exhaustive, but believe it or not, this isn't everything that happened at Microsoft's event today. So again, if you're interested, you can watch the West coast crew talk over the press conference. And if you just want trailers, Alex has uploaded those to our trailer page!