Animal Crossing: New Horizons Delay
Animal Crossing was the game that Nintendo fans were wanting to hear more about during the E3 Direct. How cute will it be? Will we get a long look at it in action? And when exactly in 2019 is it going to release?
While the answer to the first question was, of course, very cute, the answers to the other two were more disappointing. Not only did we only get a short trailer, but it was confirmed that New Horizons would not be launching until next year.
That leaves Pokemon Sword & Shield as the only big Switch exclusives for the fall. The new Fire Emblem title is due next month, but the end of 2019 is going to have to be held up by Pokemon.
It’s big enough that it shouldn’t matter, but it would have been nice to have Animal Crossing launch around the same time so that we could have something a bit different to Sword & Shield’s new, England inspired setting.
Lack of New Xbox One Exclusives
Microsoft’s E3 conference was fine. The excitement of Keanu Reeves’ appearance and a new look at Halo Infinite were great, but many fans expected them to hit one out of the park with PlayStation taking a year off. It was their time to prove that the future was Xbox‘s, showing off everything that die-hard fans of their console could look forward to.
Gears V and Halo Infinite are cool, and Bleeding Edge is an intriguing change for Ninja Theory but we saw nothing else from the developers that Microsoft has acquired in the last couple of years, or what’s next for some of their more established studios.
With the likes of Death Stranding, The Last of Us Part II, and Ghosts of Tsushima all confirmed or rumored to be releasing in the next year or so, PlayStation are still going from strength to strength with their exclusive lineup, so it was both surprising and disappointing that Microsoft didn’t at least tease what they’re working on.
Limited Info on Project Scarlett
Much like Microsoft’s underwhelming exclusives showing, it was disappointing that we didn’t get a deeper look at the new Xbox console, especially with PlayStation unable to fire back with their own reveal.
We all knew that Project Scarlett was a thing, and that it was a streaming focused system that would push the Xbox brand into the future. However, we didn’t really learn anything about it from its E3 appearance.
It would have been great to actually see the system, or just hear more about it than technical jargon that casual Xbox fans won’t understand. Calling it ‘our most powerful console’ is all well and good, but we needed to see more about how it worked.
Maybe Microsoft is holding things back for next year, since the scheduled release is still about 18 months away, but E3 2019 was their chance to steal the limelight.
Lack of Gameplay in Reveals
One thing that was noticeably absent across all of E3 was the lack of gameplay on show. For far off games like Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild sequel, that makes sense, but to see nothing substantial from games that are just a couple of months away or highly anticipated is strange.
Ending Square Enix’s conference, we expected a huge Avengers blow out, full of multiplayer details and gameplay that showed how each hero played. Instead, we got an odd trailer that looked like CGI mixed with a few seconds of gameplay, although we couldn’t be sure what was what.
Then there was the likes of Gears 5. We’ve seen so little from the game to suggest that it’s more than just more Gears of War, and it’s just three months away from releasing, so why we didn’t see any gameplay is baffling. This was the case for so many games too.
Whether it’s just a case of developers keeping their hands close to their chests as to not spoil anything, or that they’d rather avoid any of the ‘downgrading’ controversies that hit the likes of Marvel’s Spider-Man and Watch Dogs over the past few years, it’s difficult to say, but it’s hard to get too excited about a three minute extended cutscene.
Underwhelming Marvel’s Avengers Reveal
As we just mentioned, the Marvel’s Avengers reveal at Square Enix’s conference was disappointing. The publisher said that we’d get the first reveal at E3 and with Avengers being so huge right now, fans were understandably really excited.
Even Square Enix’s conference itself increased expectations. Final Fantasy VII Remake opened the show with character reveals, cinematic trailers, and huge chunks of gameplay. Since they did that for FFVII, a lot of people assumed that Avengers would get the same treatment to end the show. We were wrong, though.
It got a fair amount of time, and the reveal of the stellar voice cast was excellent, but the ‘full reveal’ left us with more questions than answers about what the game really was.
There’s single-player and co-op. You control one Avenger in linear segments, but can pick and choose in more open sections. But how does it all work?
Even after spending about 15 minutes on the game, talking about it and showing footage, we didn’t know what kind of game Marvel’s Avengers is, and that’s a sure fire sign of a disappointing showing.
We’ll have more info on the game later this week though as we share our thoughts on the extended, behind-closed-doors E3 2019 demo.
Missing Game Announcements (Skate 4, Splinter Cell, Fable)
Yes, there would have been more if there had been fewer leaks in the run-up to E3, but there weren’t that many surprise announcements during any of the conference, with Nintendo saving the biggest one for the end of their direct.
Now, the likes of Skate 4 are pie-in-the-sky dreams that people might as well forget about at this point – it’s not happening! However, where were the reveals for the rumored Splinter Cell and Fable titles?
The hints and rumors for both are so strong at this point that it’s pretty likely that they’re being worked on in some capacity. Maybe they’re being saved for the next generation of consoles, or simply aren’t quite ready to be shown off yet. Or, alternatively, we’re all wrong and they don’t exist at all.
Anyway, even if you’re not interested in Splinter Cell or Fable, or even Skate 4, there was a lack of surprises altogether at E3 2019.
About the author
