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    E3 2021

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    After the cancellation of E3 2020 due to COVID-19, E3 returned as a digital-only event taking place from June 12-15.

    E3 2021: Microsoft & Bethesda

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    It was always unusual that Bethesda held an annual conference for their upcoming games. They don't have the small country of third-party developers that console manufacturers do, and their two most popular first-party series can go epochs without a core entry. It's been six years since the last mainline Fallout and ten since the last Elder Scrolls. So, for multiple years, Bethesda was lifting the lid on a nearly empty box. Rolling their show into Microsoft's mitigates that possibility. They don't have to work out how to fill an hour when the pickings are slim; they can enjoy the support of a stockier company with more to unveil. This year, Microsoft and Bethesda became a double threat.

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    S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl makes one of the most intimidating shooters out there look approachable. It'll be interesting to see whether or not the developers smooth out the series' more notorious mechanics. Jack Sparrow in Sea of Thieves just makes sense. It's a chaotic, adventurous character in a sandbox of the same personality. Another game might let you play as Jack, but remember that the rewards in Sea of Thieves are mostly cosmetic. If the Jack Sparrow skin over-rode all your other clothing, it would nullify that customisation, and if you are Sparrow, you can't narrate a whole quest track. Part of the fun of that drunken swashbuckler is hearing him blather. The addition of elements from PotC may also reel some casual players back in who bounced off of the earlier, clunkier Sea of Thieves.

    My first Yakuza game was Zero, which I played in 2020. I took a risk with it, worried that it might be too cringy or esoteric, but it was just the right balance of serious and goofy, with its humour deriving from the ridiculous meeting the everyday. However, I was aware that its story reflected a lineage of Yakuza plots I had no experience of. The context we have for games transforms our perceptions of them, and previous entries in a series provide some of the most affecting contexts. It makes all the difference to have a whole run of games like Yakuza's coming to Game Pass. Although, I can't help thinking that the consolidation of all these titles under a single subscription service represents similar control grabs by giant media companies in other industries. Those haven't been positive for the health of art and entertainment.

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    Battlefield hasn't grabbed my attention for a while, but something was shocking about seeing a city turned into one of its dynamic, destructible warzones. I'm sceptical of DICE's claim that 2042 will have the most malleable architecture yet; Bad Company 2 let you really go to town on some of its structures. Yet, you can see how the wingsuits could make for some jaw-dropping multiplayer moments. Imagine using a tank to snipe a wingsuited soldier out of the sky or splattering one of them with a jet fighter.

    Twelve Minutes is one of the games I'm most hotly awaiting. Many titles let us warp time to mechanical ends, but I can't think of one that allows us to manipulate time to reshape the narrative systemically. This is likely because it's impractical to develop a story that branches in all the directions a time-travel tale can. But confine it to one room and twelve minutes, and you might have a shot. The overhead camera is an eccentric choice for an instance of story-driven entertainment. It suggests a disconnected perspective, putting you in the godly seat of someone playing around with the figurines in their diorama.

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    Bethesda's marketing strategy for Fallout 76 continues to be ignoring that something went drastically wrong with it. Seeing the DLC implement a morality system makes it feel like 76 is clawing its way back to just where Fallout 3 was in 2008. Party Animals takes the award for perhaps the most legally actionable game I've seen at an E3. I can confirm this furry fighting toy was not made by the same people who developed Gang Beasts. But there are the same grabs and headbutts and hanging animations. I'm kind of impressed at the boldness.

    I was a vocal promoter of Inside, and if Sommerville looks familiar, it's because the co-founder of its developer, Jumpship, is the former CEO of Inside studio, Playdead. Playdead's work, however, used a side-on camera for all its games. The graphical spirit of Inside lives on in Sommerville, but 3D scenes open up new possibilities for sets, composition, and animation.

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    Halo Infinite was what I was most expectant for in this year's expo. I'm the kind of guy who's spent over 250 hours in Halo 5 and will take the new multiplayer trailer apart beat by beat. This title's appearance in 2020 was exciting, but in some ways, left me wanting more. We've taken plenty of nostalgic trips back to the original ring; we don't need another. However, this time, I felt like we saw less of the old and more of the new. As with Halo 5, changing how the player can traverse the environment changes how the environment can be designed. The map we saw in this briefing suggests that the ability to propel yourself across the level using the grapple has enabled the developers to sculpt more expansive areas. That open space can accommodate the classic Halo vehicles that took a backseat in Halo 5.

    Microsoft and Halo community discuss Infinite as the point at which the series enters live service territory for the first time. I believe that Infinite will be a more frequently and extensively updated Halo than any previous. Still, I would mention that 5 also effectively functions as a live service game. New gametypes, features, and maps were added over time, free of charge. The idea of Infinite going free to play puts me a little on edge. At launch, Halo 5's microtransactions effectively let you buy vehicles with which to demolish your opponents, and I don't think anyone wants a repeat of that. But then, they did get more reasonable in the integration of their lootboxes over time. On the campaign side, I think we're still short of materials to judge on. It seems like Master Chief is a little more talkative now, which is fascinating, but given that multiplayer games are about twelve minutes and story modes are about ten hours, no one can summarise campaigns as quickly.

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    Shredders is a reminder of how homogenous a snowboarding game's environments can look. This is not one of those sports you could move between canyon, jungle, and mountain. On the plus side, Shredders is also an example of how to realise the festival feel and stir in synth music with more tact than the Steep 2 trailer did. While the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater format allows for a lot of agency in how you score points, I think there's also something to this Downhill Jam setup in which you're always on the move. Trying to conserve your momentum in a board sports game can feel like an arbitrary challenge, and losing it leads to anticlimaxes. In Shredders, you wouldn't have to worry about that; gravity can do all the work as you try your hand at the tricks.

    Replaced and The Ascent look like they could be more successfully produced than Cyberpunk 2077: a lesson in scope. It's also noteworthy that we've yet to hear any news at the show about the future of Cyberpunk. Perhaps the devs are just caught up in the gargantuan task of fixing it. In Grounded, the mundane appears novel and amazing through us being shrunk down to the size of an ant. It's that perspective shift that makes a DLC like Shroom and Doom work, but with the versatility of this perspective change, there would be limitless new settings that could work for it.

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    The update to Among Us looks absolutely minimal. As best as I can tell, it's a few new micro-games and some extra kill animations. What I'm more invested in is the graphical upgrade they say they've been working on. This blobby prototype look has never engaged me, but then, I've also never been convinced that Among Us is a constructive iteration on earlier social bluffing games like Mafia and The Resistance. As Microsoft continues to support Flight Simulator, I find myself so glad that this thing exists. The original Microsoft Flight Sim was born in a time when the publisher had a whole different relationship with video games. Years on, it felt like a different development ecosystem could not birth the same game, but it did; the ultimate chill aeroplane game lives on.

    It's beautiful serendipity that E3 means the Forza Horizon games are revealed in the summer. These are titles that perfectly capture the feeling of sitting in a car screeching down a baking road. I'm curious how these cars will handle in those narrow Mexican village streets, but moving outside of the western world (non-indigenous Australia counts as honourary west) presents a whole new frontier for this series' settings.

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    The show finished as it started: on a pre-rendered trailer, which is a little weak. These videos often go big in presentation but are comparatively distant from the final game, even compared to the average E3 demo. Despite that, I appreciate Redfall's keen character design. Phil Spencer's closing speech for this conference was over-the-top. He didn't need to pull out that many stops in congratulating Xbox because the quality of the briefing spoke for itself.

    The developers and publishers had some rotten luck last year; the pandemic struck at the worst time it could for them. In 2019, the current console generation was just winding down, leading to a dry spell in releases. Just as the companies might have been raring to resurface and show off their shiny new toys, the virus hit, and the expo was called off. COVID continues to impact the industry deeply, but we have, at last, gotten beyond a time in which we're either waiting for new consoles or for the plague to pass. Xbox and Bethesda were two companies able to stand tall with new hardware and a reinvigorated platform. Thanks for reading.

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