E3 Wednesday feels different this year. There’s the standard sleep-deprived exhaustion and feeling that we’ve overdosed on high-definition footage of people being seriously injured in slow motion, but with a lingering sense of having missed something.
What this might be is anybody’s guess, as the list of suspects is longer than Phil Spencer’s shopping list: Call of Duty? Assassin’s Creed? A proper Ubisoft bombshell? Could it be that it’s not really E3 without waiting 40 minutes to watch a suited Sony exec reciting statistics no living human cares about? We will not rest until we have answers or until there’s a proper row about next-gen leaks, whichever comes first.
Nintendo at least managed to kick off a new generation of suited man in its Direct presentation, the last pre-show conference, with the debut of Bowser (Doug) in a nice skit with Bowser (actual) launching us into the post-Reggie era. We can report that yer man does a decent line in sincere-sounding games chat on an infinity-white background, and are pleased to note that the majority of what he introduced is coming out this year, filling out what was previously a rather lean Christmas.
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The headliner was Luigi’s Mansion 3, which Tom has played and liked. The presentation highlighted jelly-like co-op avatar Gooigi, which is unpleasant to say and think about and is definitely going to result in the internet creating things that will make Bowsette look like the pinnacle of whitebread mundanity. We will not be researching this hypothesis and strongly advise you don’t either. Pokemon Sword and Shield is basically Pokemon again and contains two new Pokemon. It does not, however, contain Pokemon, which at this point is kind of a relief. The Links Awakening remake looks lovely, and Dark Crystal Tactics looks weird. Smash Bros added the guy from Dragon Quest 11, who we don’t know very well, and Banjo-Kazooie who we do, and are accompanied by a soundtrack by the game’s original composer Grant Kirkhope.