Normally I'm not the sort who gets terribly worked up when E3 comes along. The thick corporate veneer, lingering stench of focus groups, fake smiles, and cacophony of talking points are enough to make me want to flip tables, kick puppies, or in the very least pen a strongly worded introduction to an article discussing the event. This year was actually a bit of a surprise. There were three games that I actually thought were interesting enough to set aside my unbridled hatred for big business, and start to drift ever so slightly towards actually being excited about something.
First, we have a Final Fantasy VII remake in the works. This didn't so much get me excited as surprise me. It's something people have been begging Square-Enix to make for years, and time and time again the company either said no or didn't respond at all. Now they've finally decided to go through with it. Given the sheer grassroots movement that's been pleading for this to be made, I guess it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise that the thing is in the works, but the cynical side of me had just about written the whole thing. What's next? A new Chrono Trigger game? It would be nice, but maybe it's best not to ask for too much at once. We may wind up with a dreadful mobile phone game instead if we aren't careful.
As interesting as this remake is, I do wonder if I'll play it myself. Having spent plenty of time with the game when it first came out almost 20 years ago, I don't really have much desire to revisit it. It was an enjoyable experience on the first playthrough, but doing it again would be a sizable investment of time that I would much rather invest in other titles that I've never played before. Even with the promised changes to the story, it's not enough to entice me. If anything, I can see this being great for the Final Fantasy diehards that have wanted this to exist for years, as well as those too young to have played it the first time, and may want to give it a go now. I'm sure a lot of people are going to spend a lot of time with this remake when it comes out. I just won't be one of them.
Times have changed, though, and it's unlikely to cost quite so much to make such a game nowadays unless the team wants to blow absurd amounts of cash on visuals. The combination of crowdfunding and Sony's financial backing will certainly get more conversation going about where the line aught to be drawn between corporations and the public bankrolling one of these projects. We already had a bit of a kerfuffle with Koji Igarashi's Castlevania successor, and I could see the discussion becoming more heated if the trend continues.
As a game, I'm pretty curious where it'll go from here. The Shenmue games were some of the first to attempting a living, breathing world that players could be transported to. Since then, countless others have made such games to varying degrees of success. Once the nostalgia and longing have subsided, how will Shenmue 3 match up against the plethora of open world games that have sprung up over the last 15 years?
While the first two games I've mentioned came as a surprise, this final one didn't. It was only a matter of time before we'd see an announcement for Fallout 4. Almost five years have past since New Vegas was released, so we're about due for a new game. If anything this sequel feels a little slow in coming, but I guess that's what happens as DLC becomes the norm and extends the life of a game.
One area that I'm sitting on the fence about is how the game will have combat more like a traditional third / first person shooter. The series has slowly been going in that direction for a while now, first ditching the isometric view, then slowly transitioning to a faster, more fluid form of combat. However, I do worry a bit that Fallout will just wind up going the route of the Mass Effect series and become largely an action game, with just enough bars to fill so that Bethesda's PR team can still get away with adding "RPG Elements" on the bullet points.
Nonetheless, this is easily the first E3 in a very long time to actually impress me (even if I do come across as a tad cynical in this article). Games were announced that I never thought would come along, and suddenly I have a very meaty RPG to look forward to at year's end. The news almost feels too good, and I should probably brace myself for a decade or so of lackluster exhibitions as the great cosmic balance tries to reassert itself.
