Gaming
Square Enix E3 Conference Roundup
Square Enix’s conference wasn’t a show stopper but they brought plenty of great content to be excited about
Going into E3 gamers had high expectations for the Square Enix conference, planning to see footage from Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy XV, and more of the Final Fantasy VII remake. Square Enix was able to deliver on some of those hopes but not everything. They had a long list of games to showcase and that meant they couldn’t spend as much time on games we were hoping for.
They kicked off the festivities by showcasing Just Cause 3, giving gamers a huge stream of gameplay footage to show it will be the most explosive title in the series yet. Just Cause 3 will have more action, explosions, and insanity than almost any game before it. Square Enix confirmed gamers can jump into that non-stop insanity on December 1st, 2015 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
After that excitement for the Square Enix show dropped off the map with a long series of games and reveals that failed to impress. Starting off with an awkward introduction for a sequel to Nier, a JRPG that few people will remember. After that it was a long series of titles that had already been introduced at the Microsoft and Sony conferences including: World of Final Fantasy, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy VII trailer, Hitman, and Deus Ex Manking Divided.
There was also a few a mobile titles on display like Lara Croft Go, a tile-based puzzle solver that didn’t draw a lot of attention. Later on they Square Enix showed off a new Kingdom Hearts mobile title called Kingdom Hearts: Unchained. Set in a separate timeline with new characters, including cats that might also be keyblades. It goes without saying people were confused by the end of the trailer.
Things started looking up after all of that confusion with the reveal of Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness. The next step in the story of Star Ocean taking place sometime after the events of the last game. Sadly the game is still in the early dev stages so the environments were stunning but empty. Square Enix also spent far too much time talking about the previous Star Ocean games then Integrity and Faithlessness.
Finally a game the audience had been begging for finally hit the big screen, Kingdom Hearts 3. Square Enix blew everyone away with a huge showcase of gameplay footage from the next installation in Sora’s story. Every bit of the video was stunning filled with Keyblade swinging, heartless pounding, super charged ability destruction.
The audience was on their feet clapping and screaming by the end, hoping the next reveal was going to be just as amazing (if that was even possible). Obviously Final Fantasy XV would have been the perfect follow-up, instead Square Enix introduced their new Final Fantasy Portal App that will put all of your Final Fantasy news in one place. That killed off audience excitement in an instant.
No one clapped and Square Enix President and CEO Yosuke Matsuda quickly changed gears to their last reveal. A brand new JRPG, from newly formed studio Tokyo RPG Factory, called Project Satsuna. They only had concept art to show making it a sad end to the conference of a legendary developer.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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