E3 2018: Nintendo

Nintendo's press conference this year looked a lot like Bethesda's for the last few years. Instead of having a whole platter of games to set down in front of us, they had a few snacks and then one big course. The company filling up the majority of their briefing with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate this year is comparable to the way Bethesda have wallpapered over their pressers with plenty of Fallout 76 or Dishonored 2 before now. This is why Nintendo's presenters continually sounded like they were about to sign off in the first third of the show: because they were preparing to say goodbye before the presentation was gobbled up by this wiki-like description of every character and Final Smash in their new fighting game. It betrays the delivery mechanism they built for E3.

Before, the plan was that Nintendo Direct gave a quick overview of everything that Nintendo was releasing in the coming years, lasting around forty-five minutes so it wouldn't bore the average viewer. Nintendo Treehouse was the other side of the coin, offering three full days of streams for the many hardcore Nintendo fans who would find Direct presentation too flimsy or be saddened that it didn't talk about the niche Nintendo game they have their heart set on. This year, Nintendo bungled it because they nerded out in the Nintendo Direct showcase, potentially boring those more casual viewers and leaving little exclusive content for the Treehouse. They seem to have done this because they didn't bring much new to E3 apart from Smash Bros. Where publishers are frequently guilty of showing us too little of their games, Nintendo made the rare blunder of showing us an excess.

If you blinked, you probably missed it, but one of the most interesting ideas they showed pre-Smash Bros. was a game which took place across more than one Switch tablet in which players could move their avatar seamlessly across the divide between the screens. There was also a sequel to Overcooked! which I hope gives us more time between new play elements than the previous game did; the original made for some brilliantly chaotic co-op but could have done with some more time to let each mechanic breathe. Fortnite is sliding onto the Switch, and with the amount we hear about ports of that game, it's becoming the new Skyrim. Then there's Pokémon Let's Go! and the Poké Ball Plus. One of the reasons the Wii didn't hit its mark was that the controller felt two steps removed from the sword or golf club or whatever else your character on screen was holding. The Poké Ball Plus potentially rectifies that problem, but peeking outside the presentation for a minute, it seems the controller will only have three hours of battery life, and we know the bundle including it and the game will cost $100. It's a ridiculous value proposition and indicative of Nintendo's ongoing difficulties cheaply manufacturing physical objects for a mass market.

As for Smash Bros. itself, it makes sense that if Nintendo were going to bring one game, it would be this one. Containing people, places, and items from every one of their popular series, it's the single title which has the potential to please the most Nintendo fans simultaneously, and in some ways, this does feel like a game designed for Nintendo fans first and Smash fans second. It plays host to sixty-five characters, including those from every previous Smash game, balancing be damned. Presumably, the idea is that the competitive Smash scene works out for themselves which of these characters are overpowered or underpowered and adjusts accordingly. It can't be easy for Nintendo to cater to both the casual and esports fanbases that exist for Smash. But, at least this way, both groups can get the experience they want out of the game with some house ruling as opposed to characters being left out of the game for balancing reasons and the casual fans never getting the experience they want. However, releasing all this info on the game at once means there's less time to savour each quanta of it. It's the opposite strategy to the Smash Dojo they used for Brawl wherein you could come back every day and see a new announcement. They probably ended up in this jam because there's no way for them to get out their mission statement of having every Smash character from the past in the roster without spoiling who they've got on their guest list. There's also a conspicuous absence of a character that comes completely out of left-field this year. Where is this game's ROB, Wii Fit Trainer, or Duck Hunt Dog? I know they have Ridley on deck now, but he's nowhere near as unusual as those previous choices. I thought the more creative use of a character was the Inkling who can transform stages with their paint and has to charge up their ink when they run dry.

Overall, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate seems to be more of a Smash Bros. 4.5 than a Smash Bros. 5 and with not much more than a video of patch notes to show this year, I didn't feel that warmth that only Nintendo bring to E3. This is a developer who keeps making sweet, personable games like Animal Crossing, Kirby, Yoshi's Wooly World, even Mario Odyssey, but what they had this time was one big fight looked at through the lens of a bullet-pointed list. That doesn't seem like what the "Disney of video games" would bring, and now there's a question of whether Nintendo doesn't care about E3 anymore or whether they're just having an off year. I bet that it's the latter; that like Bethesda in previous years, their development cycles didn't line up to give them a lot of functioning builds at this point in time. It's easy to confuse them putting less oomph into their press briefing with them bowing out of the expo because we're so used to the companies showing everything they have in their conference. I think if Nintendo were going to toss aside E3, it would happen as a more gradual process which probably didn't involve them still committing to Nintendo Treehouse. You don't put on three full days of streaming for a convention that you're no longer interested in. At the very least, I believe we'd need to see this happen for another year or two to confirm that this is an issue of complacency instead of a deficit of presentable work. For now at least, the Nintendo we know didn't show up at E3; this is someone else. Thanks for reading.