Bethesda held their E3 event last night, here’s everything they announced.
Pete Hines’ Soapbox
Pete Hines opened the event after a short video about the people making their games.
Todd Howard
Todd Howard followed Hines by talking about the “well-deserved criticism” Bethesda received for the not-so-great Fallout 76. He went on to praise the players that stuck with 76 for a good attitude. Next, he moved on to The Elder Scrolls: Blades, the free-to-play game that I’ve loaded up exactly once.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades Minute with Craig Lafferty & Matt Carofano
Lafferty & Carofano introduced an update to their mobile game that is available now before talking about how Blades will come to the Nintendo Switch this Fall. Accounts and progress are promised to be portable between the platforms, it’s still the same free-to-play game.
Fallout 76 Updates with Tom Mustaine & Jeff Gardiner
With an innovation in press briefings Apple could learn from, Lafferty and Carofano handed off to Mustaine and Gardiner without bouncing back up the stack to Todd Howard or Pete Hines. Amazing. They introduced the above trailer for the Wastelanders update which actually has human characters to interact with. The feature list at the end of the trailer:
- Human NPCs Return
- New Main Quest
- Choices & Consequences
- New Weapons & Gear
Those things sound a lot more like a Fallout game that I might be interested in playing, and a complete shift from the original pitch of the game which promised that all the human characters would be real people.
The Wastelanders update is due for the Fall.
Of course, no modern first-person game is complete in 2019 without a battle royale mode, and that’s what Fallout 76 is getting in the form of the 52-player Nuclear Winter mode. The winner gets to become vault overseer.
There’s a free trial for 76 from June 10th to the 17th, with an early version of the Nuclear Winter mode. There’s no release date or window for the Nuclear Winter mode. There is a trailer:
Todd Howard’s Thanks for the Critcism, Unless You’re a Criminal Journalist here to Lambast our Games
Howard reappeared to reiterate that every update so far is free, and to say that they’re still working on Starfield and the 6th Elder Scrolls game before thanking the audience for their appreciation and criticism. To the best of my knowledge, Bethesda still refuses to ship review copies of games to press.
Ghostwire Tokyo
Shinji Mikami appeared onstage to announce Ghostwire Tokyo, an action-adventure game and Mikami also introduced Ikumi Nakamura to talk about the game. Nakamura said that while Ghostwire Tokyo is spooky, it won’t be a survival horror game like the ones that Mikami is known for (Resident Evil, Evil Within). Instead, this game is about people vanishing in Tokyo, as depicted in the trailer. This was the most interesting game I’ve seen so far at Bethesda’s show, even though I suppose we haven’t really seen the game. No information about a release was given.
The Elder Scrolls Online…
…continues to be a thing. Matt Firor came out to boast about their growing userbase and the latest expansion that apparently is already out, Elsweyr. I’m not sure which is worse, start-up naming schemes or fantasy naming schemes. No, I’m sure, it’s start-ups. Anyway, Firor introduced the above trailer which is the follow-up to an earlier trailer. MMO’s always have interesting looking trailers to compensate for the lack of interactivty in their worlds. This trailer also ended with what Firor called a cliffhanger, but was more of a “to be continued” because nobody was really imperiled at the end. Firor said there would be a “fourth quarter story DLC” called Dragonhold, more information at QuakeCon, and “dungeon DLC” called Scalebreaker which would appear in August. QuakeCon is usually in August, but I think Firor got tripped up by the audience yelling.
Commander Keen
Firor finished up by introducing Kira Schlitt to talk about the mobile game Bethesda is making based on Commander Keen. Schlitt explained what the Keen game’s history is, before showing some gameplay that looks like it has all the worst free-to-play trappings. This summer, iOS and Android, for a “soft launch.” You know what’d be great? Remastering the orginal Keen games.
Pete Hines Returns
Hines said that Fallout shelter game is more popular than ever, and Hines also introduced a trailer for Elder Scrolls Legends, the mobile collectible card game that has been out for some time. Hines talked about an expansion for Legends called Moons of Elsweyr. That is coming on the 27th of June.
Rage 2 Updates
Avalanche and id’s Rage 2 is an odd game, the first game wasn’t a critical success, this one has little to do with it, and the marketing never really matched the gameplay from what I’ve heard. Still, Hines introduced the above trailer for some upcoming updates, including the first story DLC with a release window of “later this year.”
Wolfenstein Updates
With the third id software universe that’s been plundered by Bethesda, this one mostly for the better, Machine Games’ Jerk Gustafsson appeared after the Rage 2 trailer to talk about the previously announced Wolfenstein Cyberpilot VR game. Gustafsson said it’d be out this July. Also in July, on the 26th is the release of co-op FPS Wolfenstein Youngblood, as depicted in the trailer above. I am all for how much Gustafsson is about killing Nazis, he spoke about how fun it is to kill them in VR and in Youngblood, but there’s some cut to that excitement when Zenimax’s board of directors includes Robert Trump who supports his brother’s fascism 100%. We literally have people who came here seeking refuge from the hell their homes have turned into after US intervention, dying in concentration camps.
Deathloop
Arkane’s Dinga Bakaba and Sèbastien Mitton spoke about a new Arkane first-person action game called Deathloop that looks very interesting. Two characters killing each other and then immediately waking up to do it again each time they die could be a Black Mirror episode, but I think that Arkane’s stories are more interesting than TV.
Robert Duffy & James Altman’s Patent Showcase
Duffy and Altman spoke about middleware technologies they had developed for streaming games to have lower latency and require less bandwidth called Orion. They took the time to get a dig in at Oculus with a photo of Tim Willits wearing an early, slapped-together, VR HMD. Finally, they encouraged people to sign up for the “Slayers Club” a corporate-owned alternative to Doomworld that gives you brownie points for doing what they’d want you to do, including signing up to be unpaid QA for Orion streaming solutions. I think I’m good with Doomworld.
This trailer for Doom Eternal put a nice cap on the patent showcase. Hugo Martin and Marty Stratton appeared after the trailer to talk about Doom Eternal and introduce two segments of gameplay that looked fun. Stratton gave a release date of November 22nd. They also talked about a collector’s edition helmet that they had pre-arranged to be worn by an employee in the audience. Bethesda hasn’t had the best track record with collector’s edition merchandise. Stratton and Martin also introduced a trailer for a 2 demons versus 1 doom slayer multiplayer mode seen below.
I’m glad they’re using Doom as a place for interesting multiplayer ideas, but they keep talking about QuakeCon without talking about Quake. Pete Hines even returned to call some portion of QuakeCon, DoomCon. If Quake Champions isn’t working out, it wasn’t mentioned at all, then I have some ideas for updating Quake 1, 2, and 3.
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