The press conferences Sunday were great. Microsoft came out and said we got 50 game 16 exclusives and 18 premieres, I'm sure I have some other numbers wrong but I don't know what an exclusives is or premiere. They had all kinds of different games did a nice job touching on all them. I want to play gears, not gears pop but gears 5. The biggest issue I have with MS was the fact that I don't own an xbox and they didn't do anything to make think of buying one. Some kind of mention of hardware or new sku or price .. I don't know what. Sure they mentioned they have most powerful system available, but didn't get me to the point of maybe I should buy xbox. Maybe if sony really shits the bed I'll change my mind but that seems far fetched. This also goes to the idea of premiere vs exclusive? I know I will not be able to play Halo, gears 5 and forza everything else I'm going to assume I can get on ps4 or not interested in. Dying light 2 looked great, but I looked at its listed has ps4 too. I never played first one but what they should of two looked great, and depending on release date maybe I'll go back and look at first one.

Bethesda though I thought had a slightly better show, sure they had fewer games but they had deeper dive into some. Maybe its just cause I'm a fallout fan and Todd Howard talked for much longer than assumed he would. They gave release dates that were sooner than expected, nov 2018 for fallout 76, wow. They also named things that are 5 years out. Sure just say elder scrolls 6. I thought Sunday was great day and hope rest of E3 lives up to Sunday, Sunday Sunday.

I don't know how you could say Bethesda did a deeper dive when they didn't title the new Elder Scrolls even or say anything about Starfield besides hey it's sci-fi. Otherwise it was mostly mobile games or card games or stuff that's been out. Fallout 76 looks fine for what it is but even as a person who isn't a Fallout purist, things like nuking enemies in PvP casually really rubs me the wrong way. I really thought that was a bad conference.

Microsoft outshone them by a complete landslide IMO. 95% of the games they showed looked not just good, but from great to exceptional. They were candid as hell about new consoles. And ended their gig by unveiling a hugely anticipated game that wasn't even theirs. It was an ego-free, smug-free, game-centric explosion of fun. They just nailed it. (It was full of buzzwords and ridiculous phrases, but they weren't inaccurate. It is the most powerful console, technically the best place to play most games even if it's the least content-rich, and they might be further ahead next time than Sony - I feel like they're going to start next-gen sooner than Sony anticipates.)

Bethesda started with a cringe-worthy opening 'why we're so awesome' recruitment video; was made up of 80% teases, a cool but not-as-bombastic-as-it-made-out chunk of Rage 2, and a weirdly all-over-the-place Fallout 76 reveal that contained many attempts at calming some concerned fans down, but possibly made them more concerned. The setting seems great, very reminiscent of the Point Lookout DLC, but I'm even more confused if it'll actually be a good Fallout game.

Doom, Wolfenstein II, Evil Within 2, and Prey are four of my favourite games in the last fifteen years, no exaggeration, so I'm not coming from some anti-Bethesda angle, I just thought this was a fairly poor show for them.

Yeah, nah. Microsoft had the best showing I've ever seen them give, and easily beat out Bethesda. I'm in a similar situation as you, OP. I have a PS4 and I don't think MS did a single thing to make me buy in on their ecosystem, but they had the games. That is always the most important part. Sure, I'm going to buy all of them on another system (and that lack of exclusives is what keeps it from being an all-time great conference), but they made a hell of an impression.

Bethesda was largely uninteresting or otherwise obtuse. Why the concert? Why do think I should buy Rage? What the hell is that new Wolfenstein thing? Why so little info on Doom? Why did you spend so long on Elder Scrolls mobile? Why are you showing Starfield of Elder Scrolls VI when they're not showing up for half a decade? Not to mention that, even though they did a fairly deep dive on Fallout 76, I still have no idea if that game is for me.

@stephen_von_cloud: The nuking mechanic looks amazing! Mainly because it's more than just destroying someone's buildings. After the nuke goes off you can enter the fallout, and the stuff that was built there still exists it's just all torn up and blown up and stuff. Very cool mechanic if you ask me, especially because it fits so perfectly with the Fallout lore.

@brettvandelay: Not only that, but it sounds like maybe the only or best way to gather for some rare resources. You might die of radiation in the process though.

This is a weird and kinda dumb topic, sorry. Microsoft hit it out of the park with their press conference, BUT, how many of these games do I need to buy an xbox for? Any? Bethesda showed a lot of stuff and the sheer number of games was impressive for just one studio (EA...) plus their talk of present, near future and far future releases to give you an overall idea of what's going on, but for all that almost every big game talked about just leads to more questions than answers if ANY answers at all. Honestly disappointed that Rage 2 looked like a post apocalyptic bulletstorm, That's actually not a bad thing, but I wish the early gameplay teaser they let out could be seen in the game; the zany attitude.

I would say they were both good conferences overall but a platform holder and a major publisher have very different things they are trying to do.

I think you nailed it.

No way whatsoever to that thread title. MS's show was so much more fun and interesting, diverse, informative, and fast moving. They nailed it. The lack of anything really on Starfield and Beth's obligatory title card for ES VI at the end was so "Here's this, now fucking leave us alone already you super annoying and persistent fans". FO76's stuff was cool but they didn't share what the game's really gonna be. If it's co-op survival then I am super excited, but I didn't think they clarified enough in the presentation.

Man you can think it's cool, and I can see that reasoning, but it absolutely does not fit with the Fallout lore at all, that's the point. Setting off nuclear weapons willy nilly goes against the entire portrayal of nuclear weapons in the series. They are what caused the apocalypse and still haunt it with mutants and all this craziness. In 3 setting one off was a giant moral decision that made you evil if you did.

I'm not so precious with it that I say it can't happen or get offended, but it really missed the mark. The fact that you get rewards for setting off a nuke like that is a perfect example.

I mean I was glued to the Microsoft show and then started watching Bethesda and was like eh I don't need this I'll just wait for the highlights.

So.. not so much for me.

Bethesda's was generally a disappointment to me, a bunch of logos for games so far away they can't say anything about them and a multiplayer fallout where you can't use mods.

I don't think anyone has to edge out anyone in terms of games announcements, particularly between these two. It was just a damn good day for announcements and gameplay showings.

@stephen_von_cloud: I’m not sure what you mean by “Fallout lore,” but I’ve played through 1 and 2 at least half a dozen times each and I assure you that being an evil bastard who forsakes others for your own gain is absolutely in the spirit of the games.

They present zero incentive not to do it how it was just shown in this demo or how it fit into a Karma system, so I disagree. if you played the originals a dozen times and can't see how they are so anti nuclear weapons in tone and present them with so much more weight than using them to PvP troll I don't know what to tell you (again, they are the ruination of mankind and what created all the horrors of the game and the game is poking fun at and using 50's atomic imagery and thinking all the time along the way).

It's just Fallout becoming watered down. I hate to sound like a No Mutants Allowed type but this is where I have to say that.

Yeah, because the past Fallouts were super positive about using nukes. Like, not any of the past games show that it was a really bad idea to use them. Not an ounce of rose tinted nostalgia of the world and way of life that was swept away by bad decisions...

I'm not sold on Rage 2, Just Cause 3 really shit the bed but i did enjoy Mad Max a lot so we'll see, co-op Fallout could be good, i haven't played 4 yet and i know my friends won't care so i'm not really considering it, there's a lot i didn't like about DOOM so we'll see if Do Me Ternal does anything to improve things... i doubt it.
Microsoft on the other hand, i'm a PC player, and in this era of pretty much all Xbox games coming to PC with decent ports anything they have to say makes me happy, i'm interested to see what Halo Infinite is, even though i haven't enjoyed the franchise since the first game, hopefully it changes up the gameplay to something more appealing.
Forza Horizon 4 looks fantastic, and as someone from the UK i'm looking forward to checking out their hedges.
I've enjoyed Gears a bunch in the past, i'm worried this one has lost its sense of humour but we'll have to wait and see.
Having a hard time remembering all the other games, but Cyberpunk is of course on my radar.

I went in to yesterday excited for Bethesda's conference and ambivalent towards Microsoft's, and I came away with the exact opposite impression.

MS nailed it. There were multiple awesome surprises. Bethesda had some stuff that interests me, but I was hoping they would have more to say about Elder Scrolls or Starfield. I feel like they really needed something of substance from either of those 2 games to offset the risk of Fallout 76, but all we got were generic ass videos that did little more than acknowledge their existence.

I said this in another thread but I thought Bethesda's show was awkward. Kicking things off with a shitty rock band was bad, but then there was a whole lot of awkward nothing throughout that show. It was painful to see presenters stop talking and wave their hands expecting applause, then continue on with a bunch of circle-jerky bullshit. I also don't like teaser trailers like Doom's - it was just some scenery and then a picture of the Doom marine and no concrete details about anything. Don't start showing something until you've got something to show me, please. Todd Howard salvaged that press conference for me, although even his presentation had some of the same nonsense.

Microsoft, meanwhile, had a lot of games to show and a lot of stuff to say. They didn't seem to have time for circle-jerky bullshit, they just jumped right into "here's what we're doing with the Xbox brand and here are a lot of video games, enjoy!" I was originally going to skip the MS conference but I caught the last half of it, then went back and rewatched most of it. I didn't think they would have anything to show and wound up blown away.

@brunothethird said:

I think that's kind of unfair. That part is largely recognition for those employees when they have their largest audience, and it's for them. In an industry where up-and-down, temporary contract work is a huge part of the work force, a company thanking and showcasing their FTE staff is nice to see. I also think Blizzard does this well, and I'm sure it feels good as an employee to see.

I preferred Microsoft's offering, I was pretty underwhelmed by Bethesda in general. Another time jump in Wolfenstein without the main character seems like a waste of the 5 or so hours it will take to complete and a Fallout taking place in my home state (which I never thought possible) turns out to be some multiplayer side project with the ultimate griefing tool built in. I hope all their games are good and I hope I am completely wrong but it all looked boring and predictable.

@rokuthirteen: That was purely my knee-jerk, tactless opinion; I wasn't criticizing it necessarily as a personal slice of Bethesda as a company, but more in the context of what we were shown. If you put that video up against what we saw, it feels out of place and awkward, like a premature celebration before the touchdown. I think it would've come across better as a pre-show thing if they'd had something more substantial (maybe 'impressive' is a better word) to show off.

I was being unfair, I won't deny it, but I stand by my cringe; it was real for me. I appreciate you not returning my quasi-hostile tone. It's hard to reply to ignorant comments so coolly, haha.

@brunothethird: You're good, my dude. I can see where you're coming from, for sure. You have a bunch of people eager to see what you have, ready to chat with their friends about it. You're waiting patiently, then it starts...but then it's a 5 minute fluff piece that's not what you were waiting for. On top of that, it's certainly some interoffice dynamic shenanigans, which can definitely be cringy to watch.

Likewise, thanks for the understanding response! I appreciate it. At first I was a bit hesitant to post in case it came across poorly, but I'm glad it didn't.

Also, you made me think about Prey again, which I feel like I'm constantly reminded to actually try. I've heard it's so good, but I haven't tried it! I should get around to that.

Microsoft: "Hey, we bought a bunch of studios, so we will have first party exclusives...eventually! Oh and here's a bunch of stuff you can play other places as well!"

Bethesda: "We like to curse around here!"

Both were average at best.

One is a publisher and the other makes consoles. How are they comparable?

Nah, Microsoft's show blew Bethesda's away. It was exactly what I like to see at E3: games, games and more games. Several great surprises as well. Bethesda wasn't awful by any means (except that cringetastic band at the beginning and the applause-hog developer), but it wasn't even close for me.

@rokuthirteen:Totally see your side, also. I think if I was one of those employees in the audience, I'd have been laughing at our goofy little video. I'm a grump sometimes; I just really wanted some Starfield info, ha.

I won't oversell Prey to you, but it's one of those games that is so much like Bioshock initially, that it sets you up to expect everything that game did and had to offer, but -- carefully and slowly -- it unravels itself to be a thought-provoking beast of dark sci-fi. It merely 'mimics' the mechanics of the genre as a vehicle to cleverly jab at the player at every opportunity, which crops up in all manner of ways, whether via the story; certain expertly-weaved encounters; hard choices; and a surprising number of multi-faceted characters who face all kinds of horrors (some of which you play a big role in).

Well worth a try.

I liked some of the parts to Bethesda but some of the attitude landed and some of it fell flat on its face.

Microsoft had a overall better show with a lot more games that I am intrigued to see more of. I can’t say the same for some of the Bethesda games shown.

Just to add I’m not a fallout/elder scrolls guy so I think your opinion may vary based on how much you enjoy that series of games. For the people in the crowd, they seemed to eat it up.

Not a bad show but nothing spectacular to me.

Nah, MS had a much better day. Rage 2 looks cool, Prey DLC is awesome, Doom is great of course and they sold me on Fallout 76 but as excited as I am for Starfield and TES those games are fucking nowhere close to being shown anytime soon.

MS just showed game after game that I want to play and it had a much better flow

haha no.

MS did a lot to get me interested in their console, with Game Pass. Such a great deal. If I hadn't already upgraded to a PS4 pro, I'd almost for sure be getting an X instead. I'm going to be looking into swapping, actually, the more I look into the library.

You can choose to use nukes in this game, roleplay how you want. Very similarly in Fallout 3, I chose to nuke Megaton, you could also choose not to nuke megaton.
The gameplay mechanic of having areas that you built still exist after they are nuked, they are just in a dilapidated state, fits perfectly within the Fallout lore. It's such a great idea.

I'd pretend to be annoyed by the nukes but I'm pretty sure I've used a Fat Man on a fuckin' molerat or something before.

I nuked a cola.