JoystickJunkie

First thing that came to mind was that the manual for Manhunt is written like a brochure for a seedy snuff video shop. It's got all these fake "scenes", famous "actors" and it actually does have some parts which sound and look really menacing. A lot of the 3D era Rockstar games (Vice City, San Andreas, Bully etc) have good manuals. Most of the GTA manuals, up until IV I think, were tour guides for their respective cities.

Homeworld has a great manual which is written as a guide to politics, strategy, etc. Halo 2 has two manuals - one for the Covenant and written from their perspective of human weaponary and one from the human perspective (I think the special edition has the Covenant one?). MechWarrior 2 has a interesting mix of diegetic and instructional. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes relies on its manual for most of its game, so that'd be a good one to check out.

Assassins Creed had a manual which was written like a User Guide for the Animus and had things like post-it notes and such but it didn't go into too much world-building. Half Life 1's manual starts with the letter of offer to Gordon Freeman from the Black Mesa administrator but then goes straight into installation and such. Blizzard games had sections of their manual set aside for lore and characters; Starcraft has a section in its manual for in-world building of each race.

A lot of older games came with documentation to help with world-building. Bioforge came with a Field Personnel Guide, Alone in the Dark came with a fake newspaper. I still think the best manual I've seen is the Wing Commander "Claw Marks" manual - top notch world-building.

I bought SWAT 4 Gold out of a Bargain bin about 8 years ago. Blew my teenage mind - an FPS that required you to stop, think and plan? Has the same attention to detail that Thief: The Dark Project has (Irrational Games are former Looking Glass staff anyway) and forces you into situations where you have to adapt and change your playstyle. I still have the box sitting here.

I can't believe it got brought back. Bought it instantly and I can't wait to play it all over again. Man that game fell into limbo hard - copies of it were going for $90 bucks for a while on Ebay...

I used to think email was a little bit dead until I started interning and seeing parts of the workforce - it ain't dead at all. There's lots of alternatives, sure, but email is far from dead.

Applying for jobs? Email. Sending through examples of work? Email. I use email to message people on buy/swap/sell websites. I'm about to start a job next week and I've had to email back and forth with the HR person. I have two/three accounts - one for logins and sign-ups and the other strictly for work. Had that drilled into me since high school: have a professional email that isn't something stupid.

Otogi 1 and 2 for the original Xbox. Both on a single disc, 60FPS, 1080p or something with achievements and I'm set.

Honestly though, a lot of the remasters/rereleases I want are from the original Xbox. I really want a HD Re-release of Jet Set Radio Future (60fps please) and Panzer Dragoon Orta. The Sega games for the original Xbox were all amazingly good.

Remastered PC Games? ....I really want a re-release of Riven: The Sequel to Myst and a playable version of Zanzarah: The Hidden Portal (the steam version is absolutely awful, runs like ass)

@betyb: And for some reason Drakan: The Ancient's Gate comes to mind (2002, third person adventure) but that was for the PS2. There's a mission where you need to collect some crystals from a mine though...

@betyb: It's all good! The only other thing that comes to mind then is Prince of Persia 3D. We'll figure it out one day!

@betyb: Was it Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard? That's the first thing that came to my mind. Like what time period do you think it might have been set in, was it a fantasy world or a realistic world?

Forza Horizon 3 looks really nice! As an Aussie, it was kind of nuts hearing them talk about areas I've actually been to the Yarra Valley and the Great Ocean Road. I'm more into arcadey fun racing games rather than simulations, of which there feels like there's a lot of.

We Happy Few looks neat, I wonder where it'd go storywise and what it would explore thematically. Same with that Inside game.

But man, Scalebound did NOT demo well and I personally felt it didn't demo that well back at Gamescom 2015. It comes off as very slow, cumbersome, doesn't animate well and the camera seems a bit clunky. They've done a pretty poor job of showing you what you ACTUALLY do; like is there an overworld, is this open-world or linear? Do you have upgrades? What's an early game mission like? Is there even a story? I just get no sense of the minute-to-minute gameplay in that game.

Felt a bit weird to announce the Xbox One S and then mention Project Scorpio - would the average consumer still want an S Model even when they know a new console is on the horizon? (I don't know even know what the "average" consumer would be anymore) I get that they probably needed to address this, and it's super interesting to see what this Scorpio thing ACTUALLY is but...I don't know. I'm still so unsure.

One thing that struck me was the connection to that whole social influencer sphere. Groups and Xbox Live; The Sea of Thieves trailer in particular. I can see a lot of younger people watching their favorite Youtubers play that and wanting to check it out. Maybe that's where the S model comes in, as like a more accessible entry point?

@megabattimus: That's already some great ideas! Custom scenarios would be a great place to see that. There's a good mod on Steam for Australia as well for Civ V but I'd like to see use represented! Great tourism output which creates culture, Diggers as Modern Age unit...Harold Holt as a marine attack unit.

@megabattimus: I was going to say that! I'd like to see Australia as a Civ.

I like the art style actually. I never really worry about how it looks, it's more about the tactics and strategy. I hope they give us more options for single-player games, like the ability to tweak the agendas of AI and their playstyles to make for a more aggressive/more relaxed game.